


The Sticking Point

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:28:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean comes back from Purgatory, but there are consequences attached to his return. Sam and Dean try to reconnect to keep each other safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Week One; Chapter 1

Week One

Chapter 1

_Tuesday_

  
Sam really should have been more surprised when his months-dead brother showed up in his apartment, but he’d become increasingly numb to death and resurrection in recent years.  
  
He’d felt it on the back of his neck for days, a weird ache with no source – just a fast prickle that had his head whipping around, looking for supernatural that wasn’t there. He’d determinedly ignored it after the first few instances, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.  
  
He’d been attending classes at the community college in Denver for almost a year, and whenever he wasn’t at home or at work, he was studying at the library. The feeling was worse there; despite the very public nature of the place there were rows upon rows of tightly packed shelves, offering coverage to whoever or whatever was keeping an eye on him. He kept his head down and studied.  
  
It was always possible that he was crazy. But he’d been crazy before – multiple times in fact – and it didn’t feel the same. There was no sense of danger, nothing that had him reaching for his knife. He was being observed, and as far as he was concerned that was a pretty small problem in the grand scheme of things. If some creature wanted a face-to-face, they were going to have to be a little more forceful about it; Sam was done seeking out trouble.  
  
It was almost ten years since Jess’s death had driven him away from Stanford, and the unfinished business had always nagged at him. Sam Winchester had three quarters of a B.A. in English and a whole program of pre-law courses under his belt. Unfortunately, Sam Winchester was a convicted felon, not to mention officially dead and buried several times over. Sam found himself starting from the very beginning under a fake name and a falsified GED.  
  
His freshman courses were almost painfully boring, but it was something to do with his time, anyway.  
  
He was pretty awesome at keeping house. Dean’s idea of a home-cooked meal had always been spaghettio’s and grilled cheese, but Sam could cook a steak three different ways and mix himself a drink that had ingredients other than whiskey and more whiskey. He ran in the mornings, went to class, and when he didn’t have a shift bartending downtown, he headed home to his tiny apartment on the outskirts of the city. It wasn’t exactly the carefree life he’d dreamed of when he was a kid, but it was safer and more comfortable than anything that had come before.  
  
His life was simple, except when he was being stalked by an ever-present sense of foreboding without corporeal form. It followed him home sometimes, and those were the nights that Sam salted the doors and windows, settling back against his pillow with his gun just in reach.  
  
He had it figured out before he ever admitted it to himself. He just knew, by the way his throat felt all the time, by the prickle of anticipation under his skin.  
  
He took the bus home after a late afternoon class, hunched and haunted. He had the night off from work, and he did his best to follow the routine. Gas burner on, oil in the pan, bottle of beer open on the counter. He went to take the vegetables out of the freezer, and then he stopped.  
  
“Dean?” he said quietly, to the emptiness of his apartment. He’d wondered too many times over the last year and a half if Dean had somehow ended up like Bobby, invisible and drifting and too stubborn to let go. He wanted to think Dean was smarter than that, but he knew with a glum certainty that he wasn’t.  
  
“Are you there?” he asked.  
  
Like a shadow, Dean slid smoothly out from the hallway, eyes dark as the Denver skyline.

*****

They went through the ritual: silver knife, knowledge test, holy water. Dean was strangely perfunctory about the whole thing, and it messed with Sam’s head.  
  
“I don’t believe it,” he said finally, and Dean’s lips lifted.  
  
“Honey, I’m home,” he said, and it sounded all wrong – dark and flip, when it should have matched the flooding joy Sam was feeling. Sam hugged him, and he felt Dean shudder a little against him – the only sign that they were reuniting after their longest separation in ten years.  
  
Purgatory, Dean said, like he’d been on vacation in Bermuda.  
  
“But…how did you get out?” Sam asked. “I thought the door only opened from one side?”  
  
“There’s a watchman,” Dean said. His face said he was choosing his words carefully. “Someone who guards the way in and out. It was just a matter of sneaking out.”  
  
And that was just about the stupidest thing Sam had ever heard. “ _Sneaking out_?” he echoed. “It took you eighteen months to come up with the plan to  _sneak out_?”  
  
“It’s not the county jail, Sam,” Dean said. “It was a little more complicated than that.”  
  
“There has to be more to it,” Sam pushed. “Did you create a diversion or make some sort of bargain or…”  
  
“No,” Dean said. “Nothing. I just escaped.”  
  
“And no one noticed?” Sam asked skeptically. “No one chased you? Come on, Dean, does that really sound like your life?”  
  
Dean threw up his hands. “Fine,” he said, “believe what you want.” His voice was verging on annoyance, and Sam wasn’t looking for a fight, so he bit his tongue. But…  
  
“Clean break?” he asked one more time.  
  
And there was only the slightest hesitation before Dean said, “Clean break.”  
  
The silence wavered for a moment, rippling with Sam’s uneasiness. He couldn’t stop looking at his brother, the curve of his cheekbones and his lashes lowered over green eyes. Dean looked winter-pale, but he walked straight, smiled with a quick flash of teeth, and had no disfiguring scars that Sam could see. He looked almost normal, except for the sharp dark glitter in his eyes. Sam found himself staring.  
  
Dean changed the subject with an expert’s ease. “So…community college, huh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly the Ivies.”  
  
“Have you been watching me?” Sam asked incredulously, and Dean made a face.  
  
“You make me sound like a stalker,” he complained.  
  
“That’s what stalkers do, Dean.”  
  
Dean rested an elbow on the table. “Just taking some time. That’s all. Nice little life you’ve got going here. Domestic.”  
  
The way Dean said  _domestic_  made it sound like the worst kind of slur. Sam was about to bite back when something occurred to him.  
  
“You were deciding whether or not to show,” Sam said slowly, working it out in his brain. “You were planning on walking away.”  
  
Dean’s eyes slid somewhere past Sam’s head for a split second, and that was the only answer he needed.  
  
“You asshole,” Sam breathed, and Dean’s eyes snapped back.  
  
“Well, I didn’t, did I?” Dean said, a defensive note in his voice. “So don’t go getting all mad.”  
  
 _All mad_  didn’t even come close to describing the fury rising in him. “How long have you been here?” he demanded.  
  
Dean leaned back in his chair, and Sam could tell he was debating answering. Sam shot him a warning look, and he relented.  
  
“A week,” he admitted, and Sam exploded.  
  
“A  _week_?” he said, rising to his feet without even realizing it. “You were skulking around, watching me for a  _week_? What the hell were you waiting for?”  
  
Dean was shaking his head in bemusement. “I just,” he stopped and dragged a hand over his jaw in frustration. It was a mannerism that was all Dean from the time he was twelve years old, and it deflated most of Sam’s anger in an instant. “You have a good thing going here and I didn’t want to…y’know. Ruin it.”  
  
Sam wanted to scream at the frustration of having this argument  _again_ , within half an hour of Dean coming back from the dead no less. He took a deep breath instead and said, “Don’t you think I’d rather have my big brother back?”  
  
Dean’s eyes locked on his for one endless second, and Sam could almost hear the words embedded in Dean’s expression:  _I wasn’t sure_. Dean would never not be needy, Sam thought, but surely having his brother back was worth whatever headaches it caused.  
  
Sam sat down again, putting one hand flat on the table to steady himself. Dean was alive, he told himself; this was cause for celebration, not arguing. There would be plenty of time for arguing later. Lots and lots of arguing.  
  
“This is really stupid,” he said out loud. “It’s eight-o-clock. There’s this little pub – “  
  
Dean’s eyes lit up like a six-year-old on Christmas Day, and for the first time all night Sam’s heart slammed into its proper place.  
  
“Cheeseburgers?” Dean asked hopefully.  
  
“Bacon cheeseburgers.”  
  
“Now you’re talking,” Dean said. “Knew I showed my face for a reason.”  
  
Dean prowled around the living room while Sam searched for his wallet. Every ID he had now proclaimed him as Sam Wesson, but the legal stakes were significantly lower with a Costco card than with a phony FBI badge. His cash was all his – no fake credit cards, no poker scams. He had earned it through tips and hours on his feet, and there was a steady sense of pride in that.  
  
Dean leaned a hand against the wall, reading half-heartedly through the titles on Sam’s folding bookshelf. His t-shirt pulled tight against his shoulders, and he looked thinner than Sam remembered.  
  
“Dude, you take calculus?” Dean sounded like he couldn’t imagine anything less appealing.  
  
“I’m in college. I take everything.”  
  
Dean’s look was a particularly annoying mix of disbelief and mockery, and Sam really needed a drink.  
  
They were halfway out the door when it hit him.  
  
“Cas,” Sam said suddenly. “He disappeared when you disappeared. Is he – “  
  
Dean froze. The look in his eyes caught Sam unaware, and Sam stopped too, unsure what kind of memory he had just triggered.  
  
Dean recovered quickly, though.  
  
“Cas, uh.” He had to clear his throat and start again. “Cas didn’t make it.”  
  
Sam went cold. “He’s…is he dead?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Dean’s voice was a little rough. “He was there when I escaped, but he didn’t make it out with me.”  
  
And Sam said, “You left him behind?”  
  
Dean jerked like he’d been slapped, and Sam’s gut went tight with guilt.  
  
“Dean, I didn’t mean…”  
  
Dean shook his head, and Sam had the feeling he was more shaking himself out of something than responding to Sam.  
  
“Shit happens,” he said, dead-eyed and smiling in a way that chilled Sam. “Let’s eat.”

*****

Dean’s eyes rolled back in his head at his first bite of cheeseburger. There was an endless list of things he’d missed in Purgatory, but at the moment he was pretty sure greasy food was right at the top.  
  
“Jesus fuck,” he said. “I’ll never eat another vegetable.” He groaned in sinful satisfaction and Sam shifted uncomfortably. Dean responded with an open mouth grin, feeling the mashed cheese, bread, and bits of ground meat lodged between his teeth. Sam’s eye roll was enormous and heartening.  
  
“So…what was it like?”  
  
Sam’s gaze was mostly on his beer, but he kept sneaking looks up at Dean, wary and dark-eyed and solemn.  
  
“What? Purgatory?”  
  
Sam bit his lip. “I mean, was it…like Hell?” He visibly winced as he said it, like the memory might sweep through and wipe both him and Dean out in one easy shot.  
  
Dean felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. Without his permission, his brain danced to the image of Castiel’s head shaking in warning, narrowed blue eyes and a tensing of the shoulders under bunched fabric. The sweetness of fruit stung his tongue, and Castiel’s face was fading, the dark tangle of trees blurring, and his body dissolving like sugar on the edge of some strange precipice.  
  
“Dude.” Sam snapped his fingers in front of Dean’s face, and Dean shook himself out of it.  
  
“No,” he said finally. “It wasn’t like Hell.”  
  
Sam raised his eyebrows expectantly, prompting for more, but Dean wasn’t about to go down that road. He signaled the waitress, holding up two fingers for two more beers.  
  
When he turned back, Sam had that annoyed, bitten-down look that Dean had missed for some reason he couldn’t remember at the moment.  
  
“Great,” Sam said. “I guess we’re not talking about it.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a few crumpled bills onto the table, beginning to slide his oversized frame out of the booth.  
  
Dean made a frustrated sound, then said, “Hold on, Jesus, you big girl.”  
  
Sam shot him a look so rife with irritation that Dean had to bit down on the insides of his cheeks to keep from grinning.  
  
“What?” he said, tone mocking. “What do you want to know, Sammy?”  
  
Sam lowered himself back into the seat, huffing. “I just want to know what you’ve been going through for the last year and a half, Dean. I mean, last time I saw you, you had spear through Dick Roman’s neck, and now you’re back and trying to act like everything is normal? This isn’t normal, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah, you seem like you’ve been real hung up on me all this time,” Dean said, and immediately wanted to give himself a good beating. Sam’s jaw locked, and Dean could only pull his eyes away and stare at the fluorescent-lit bar clock beyond Sam’s shoulder. He hadn’t realized he was angry until this second. But Jesus, he was angry. Sam had given up on him and started living his life like it was Stanford all over again.  
  
“I tried,” Sam said in a low voice. “I researched, and I looked, and I summoned every demon that would talk to me, and none of it helped. But you were gone, and I didn’t have Bobby or dad or anyone to help and– ”  
  
“Forget it,” Dean cut him off. Their beers arrived, and Dean twisted his open and drank so he didn’t have to look at that expression on Sam’s face – shame and resentment and misery all tangled up in his eyes.  
  
“Purgatory was like…” he trailed off. “You know the beginning of  _28 Days Later_ , when the coma guy is being chased through the streets? It was kinda like that, except with the added bonus of vampires and werewolves.”  
  
Sam shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe you made it out.”  
  
“Well, I had an angel on my side,” Dean said, and Sam looked at him sharply.  
  
It slammed into him again, Cas’s warning hiss and his hand tight in Dean’s collar.  _You have no concept of the consequences_ , he had said.  _You don’t know what you’ll bring down_.  
  
“Dean,” Sam started.  
  
“I told you,” Dean said with effort. “There was one chance. I made it, Cas didn’t. End of story.”

*****

Sam’s apartment was ridiculously clean. Dean remembered Sam washing their dishes in the sink, bitching; Sam, sputtering in outrage when Dean wiped chicken-greased fingers on the sleeve of his favorite t-shirt; Sam’s face screwed up in disgust when Dean hit him in the nose with a dirty sock.  
  
Sam had clearly been on his own for too long.  
  
“It looks like a chick lives here,” Dean said, then grunted as a bundle of blankets hit him square in the back.  
  
“Better than getting rats, like that place in West Texas,” Sam said, laughter in his eyes.  
  
Well, he couldn’t argue with that. The whole place smelled wrong, though. Sam was toothpaste and leather and desert sky, not stainless steel and packaged air freshener. Sam tossed him another beer, but didn’t take one for himself.  
  
“What, you’re a two-beer bitch now?” Dean called at Sam’s back, already halfway to the bathroom.  
  
“I have class tomorrow,” Sam snotted back at him. “You know – class?” and Dean grinned and leaned back on the couch against the mountain of bedding that Sam had thrown at him.  
  
No beer in Purgatory. That’s what Dean should have told Sam. No booze of any kind, and no chance to think about its absence. It would take more than two beers to make up for lost time. He took a long pull from his bottle, listening to the sounds of Sam brushing his teeth.  
  
When he tipped his head back, he could see Sam’s back in the harsh bathroom lighting, impossibly tall and chiseled, hair sliding around his face as he leaned down to spit. In the mirror, his eyes looked drawn, and Dean wondered if he had put those lines there, or if Sam had looked that tired before. Somehow, Dean was betting on himself.  
  
Dean had finished his beer by the time Sam was done and was fishing around in the refrigerator for another. His head was buzzing nicely, and he was starting to feel all loose-limbed and friendly. He was in a good enough mood that the disapproval on Sam’s face didn’t even put a dent in it.  
  
He silently offered the beer to his brother again, and cheerfully shrugged when Sam shook his head. He fell back into the couch with a sigh, then flipped on the television. Sam stalked him back to the living room, hovering.  
  
Dean scanned past four channels until he found a rerun of an old black and white sitcom. Sam was waiting to be acknowledged, and Dean refused, eyes trained on the grayscale antics, lifting his lips at the appropriate moments.  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“No TV in Purgatory,” Dean said. “Hell, no electricity. I never thought I’d miss late-night crap.”  
  
“ _Dean_.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“What are you going to do tomorrow while I’m at work?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “This, I guess,” he lied. Sam, smart kid, didn’t look like he believed Dean for one second, but Dean opened his eyes real wide, and Sam blew a lock of hair out of his face.  
  
“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll leave a key, just…don’t go too far, all right?”  
  
“You’re the best,” Dean said, stingingly sweet, and then turned back to the television.  
  
If Sam slept that night, Dean wasn’t awake for it. He’d spent enough time sharing space with Sam to know the difference between restless sleep and insomnia. Sam tossed and turned for hours, and Dean imagined his long legs kicking at the covers in frustration and worry.  
  
Dean kept himself perfectly still, quiet enough to fool even Sam’s hunter’s instinct. He’d learned a new kind of stillness in Purgatory, and it was hard to shake, even in the security of Sam’s suburban life. He arranged the blankets around him, breathed evenly into the conditioned air, and eventually, slept.

*****

_The monster has too many eyes – four on its neck and two where its ears should be, and it never closes them all at once. The issue isn’t strength, but speed. Its claws are long and hooked, and despite its spindly legs, it moves faster than a human eye could track._   
  
_He isn’t human, though, and he can see with ease where the creature is going to end up next – where it will stop, which direction it will turn. It’s hungry and hunting, and it’s close enough to smell what it thinks will be its next meal. He avoids its lunge instead, puts hand on the back of its neck and slides a whittled spear of stone through its spine, severing tendon, bone, and nerve all in one thrust._   
  
_The monster crumples silently to the ground, twitching. It doesn’t roar, which is lucky. It bleeds too much, though, and that blood will bring other, hungrier beasts. Castiel jerks the spear free and looks up at the starless sky._   
  
_“Dean,” he says. “I pray that you’re safe.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_Wednesday_

  
Dean was awake when Sam stumbled out of his bedroom the next morning. The sun pushed broken light through the living room blinds, and the kitchen smelled like his Columbian roast.  
  
“No caffeine in Purgatory,” Dean said, toasting him with chipped mug.  
  
Sam drifted past him silently, not trusting his voice until he had some coffee in him. He’d held himself very still when he first woke up, because he no longer trusted his brain to tell him what was real. Then he’d heard Dean moving around in the kitchen, and the prickly mixture of relief and uneasiness he felt was almost as bad as the thought of Dean vanishing again.  
  
Everything was wrong – Dean’s distant eyes, the taught way he held his body, the things he wasn’t saying. Sam ached with Dean’s loss on an almost constant basis, but he never dreamed of their reunion being like this.  
  
Dean’s coffee was dark and bitter, and Sam dosed it with a liberal amount of milk and sweetener before he finally turned to face his brother. Dean was leaning one hip against the counter, staring out the little kitchen window at the street beyond. His mug was clasped in one long-fingered hand, forgotten.  
  
“So…anything in particular you want to do?” Sam asked over the rim of his coffee cup. It was such a trite thing to say, but he couldn’t stand the heavy silence. “Anything you missed while you were gone?”  
  
His words seemed to shake Dean out of his trance, and Dean cocked an eyebrow, considering.  
  
“Pizza. And I wouldn’t mind getting laid.”  
  
Sam snorted, tossing back the rest of his coffee. “Shocker,” he deadpanned, then headed for the bathroom.

*****

He left his brother a menu for the pizza delivery place, a key in case he wanted to go out, and some cash. He refused to divulge the password to his laptop, no matter how much Dean needled him.  
  
Sam took the bus into the city for class every day. He’d stored the Impala in the safest garage he could find, and he hadn’t seen any point in buying another car. He’d logged enough miles with Dean – he was more than happy to let someone else do the driving at this point.  
  
His usual transfer station was seven stops and twelve minutes from his apartment. Sam disembarked after the first one instead and pulled out his cell phone.  
  
The first thing he did was email his professors and let them know he wouldn’t be in class for a few days. He manufactured a family emergency, and it was a lot closer to the truth than some of the bullshit he and Dean had come up with over the years. He was supposed to meet Becca for lunch, a date which he cancelled with a texted apology and a promise to call later.  
  
Finally, he left a voicemail for his manager at the bar. The place didn’t open until four, but Bill would arrive a few hours in advance, and he’d want to know why Sam hadn’t shown up for his shift. Sam put in a verbal request for a week’s leave, and he didn’t have to try very hard to fake the apology in his voice.  
  
He walked the ten minutes back to his apartment, and he waited.  
  
It was two hours before Dean strolled out of the door. Sam assumed he’d spent at least one of them trying to crack the laptop before he gave up. Dean casually covered a block’s length before he paused in front of a sleek black Mustang, frankly admiring. He hunched over the driver’s side window for a long moment, and Sam realized he was picking the lock. With Sam’s lockpick. Which he had to have unearthed from the chest in Sam’s closet.  
  
The door opened smoothly, and then Dean was ducking inside, disappearing beneath the driver’s side dashboard. Shit.  
  
Sam didn’t have time for equal subtlety. It took Dean about three seconds to get the engine running, and then he was pulling away in the rumbling machine, leaving Sam behind. Sam waited just until he was sure he was out of Dean’s rearview before he kicked in the driver side window of a Honda Civic.

*****

Dean’s first stop was a small public library twenty miles outside the city, and Sam watched from behind a shelf of bound journals as Dean researched…something…on one of the dusty public-use PCs. Dean switched cars in the library parking lot – something less flashy this time – and Sam followed suit.  
  
Dean drove south. He stopped for gas at a dusty little station just inside the Pueblo city limits, and he came out carrying a box of powered donuts and a liter of coke. Sam could remember him in the Impala, lips dotted with powdered sugar, fingers ever-so-careful not to smear the upholstery.  
  
The sun was high and bright by the time Sam trailed him up the stone steps of the Pueblo community college. The desert heat scorched him, and he felt his hair turning up damply at the back of his neck.  
  
Dean pushed his way through a group of students exiting the building’s first-floor lecture hall. Without the cover of a suit and tie, he looked about as dangerous and out-of-place as he could be. He stopped and knocked on one of the offices, then disappeared into the room. The bronze nameplate said Dr. P. Head, and Sam did a quick search on his phone. Paul Head, professor of religious studies, specializing in ancient religions and religious artifacts. Sam slid into a nearby classroom that had a view of the hallway, made embarrassed faces at the professor as though he were a late-arriving student, and then picked a chair to sit and wait.  
  
Dean emerged half an hour later, legs eating up the hallway in jerky frustration, and Sam ignored the whispers of the other students as he sprang out of his seat to follow his brother.  
  
Halfway across the parking lot, Dean stopped. “I’ve been in Purgatory for eighteen months,” he said without turning around. “You think I don’t know when I’m being tailed?”  
  
Shit.  
  
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets as Dean turned around, shooting him a look that was half exasperation and half amusement.  
  
“What are you doing here, Dean?”  
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”  
  
“Answer the question.”  
  
Clusters of students started pouring down over the steps. Dean hitched his head to indicate that they should move, and Sam followed him, crowding his shoulder. Dean was making quick work of a third car, and Sam wasn’t sure what it said about his own state of mind that he slid into the passenger seat like no time had passed, just picked up and resumed their illegal activities without a second thought.  
  
“Dean,” he prompted forcefully.  
  
“Easy tiger,” Dean said. “I’m just doing a little research. There may have been one tiny condition to my jailbreak.”  
  
Sam’s heart stuttered and stopped, then kicked up beating again. He’d been expecting it, he realized. Dean had been acting strange because Dean hadn’t really come home – not yet. He didn’t know what Dean had traded, but it was sure to be dangerous and life-changing and maybe apocalyptic in some way they hadn’t even imagined yet. His stomach churned sickly, and his head hurt.  
  
Out loud, he heard the despair in his own voice when he said, “What did you do?”

*****

“It’s a stone,” Dean said. “I guess the Leviathans borrowed it permanently when they rode Cas here. Has some mojo attached to it that keeps the beasties in Purgatory in line. Dick stashed it somewhere in case he ever needed it for leverage but,” Dean shrugged. “We squashed that plan.”  
  
“And you have to find it,” Sam said tiredly. It wasn’t a question.  
  
“The watchman I told you about – they call him the Nephilim – he wants it back. Bad enough to make a deal.”  
  
“And of course, you took it,” Sam said.  
  
“There weren’t a whole of options in there,” Dean said, eyes moody and jaw tight. Sam dropped his gaze as guilt slammed into him. Dean never would have made a deal if Sam had been doing his job in the first place.  
  
“Sorry.” Sam shook his head. “What about the professor?”  
  
“Total bust,” Dean admitted. “Thought I was a whack job.”  
  
“You went in there totally blind,” Sam said, exasperated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
Dean pushed himself away from the counter, quick and frustrated. “Honestly?” he said, eyebrows lowered. “Because you didn’t seem too keen on jumping back into the life, Sammy. You’ve got your whole little normal thing going for you. I was trying to protect that.”  
  
Sam looked away, working his jaw. This was familiar territory, even if he hated it. “You think lying to me is protecting me? How old are we, Dean?”  
  
Dean didn’t answer. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and Sam could see the stubble on his cheeks, matching the shadows under his eyes. He was so pale, snowy-pale, and the dark specks looked like flecks of blood. There was still something he wasn’t saying, Sam realized, and the frustration of it threatened to claw out of him.  
  
“How long do you have?” Sam kept his voice very even, because he already knew the answer was  _not long enough_.  
  
Dean’s dark eyes met his. “A month.”  
  
Fuck. Sam put his head in his hands. A month. Four weeks –  _three_ , Dean had already wasted one – to look for some object that they’d never seen, that some powerful evil was almost certainly hiding from them, and they had no Bobby, no Castiel, not a single person to help them.  
  
“And if you don’t find it?” Sam asked.  
  
Dean’s mouth tipped up. “Then I go back. Deal broken.”  
  
Shit, Sam felt tired. Dean’s appearance, Dean’s deceit, Dean’s ticking clock.  
  
“Cheer up, Sammy,” Dean said. “If I don’t find it, nothing will change. I survived the last eighteen months in Purgatory, I can survive again. You’ll still have your chance at normal.”  
  
Sam punched him across the face.  
  
Dean’s back hit the edge of the counter, and he grabbed on with both hands, his cheek blooming an angry red. He looked at Sam, stunned. “What the hell was that for?” he yelled.  
  
Sam wanted to throttle him. “For being a self-centered dick,” he bit out. His hand hurt; he might have cracked something. He hadn’t thrown a punch in over a year. He was breathing hard, emotion and exertion pushing him forward like twin engines.  
  
“Did you even think for one second what it would do to me, showing up here, pretending everything’s fine, then disappearing a month later, no explanation? How many times do you expect me to grieve for you, Dean?”  
  
Dean was shaking his head. “ _I’m_  self-centered?” he said. “I’ve been fighting like hell to get back here. To you. Have you forgotten what happened last time I disappeared?”  
  
Sam hadn’t forgotten, and the memory of that grief, the associated bite of blood on his tongue, hit him like a gut punch.  
  
Dean was eyeing him, lips pulled into something like a snarl. “You want to do this? We’ll do it. But we should move it outside.” His eyes flashed. “I wouldn’t want to smash your flat screen.”  
  
Slowly, in increments, Sam forced himself to relax. No. Fuck, no, he didn’t want to do this. He was already regretting that rash punch, but he couldn’t stay still and quiet. He’d always hated Dean’s stoicism, and no amount of death could change that.  
  
He put his hands on Dean’s shoulders, and Dean jerked, watching him warily. “I don’t want to fight with you,” he said. “Dean, I just. I need you to be all right.” He felt the solid muscle and bone of Dean under him. Not even a tremor, and goddamnit. Dean had never learned to be scared for himself. He always left Sam to do that for him.  
  
Sam took a breath. “You…you have to tell me the truth. You have to stop hiding shit from me or we’re never going to find this thing.”  
  
A pause, tight as a bowstring. “We?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow. Like there was another choice.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said, and he let his arms drop. “Because you suck at research and you’re gonna get arrested if you keep stealing cars.” Sam swallowed. “And I won’t bury you again.”  
  
Suddenly Dean was looking at him in a way that had Sam thinking of fireworks and reunion hugs and childhood relics, long tossed away. Of Dean, two steps in front of him, broad-shouldered and sure. Dean turned his back, and Sam knew it was because he didn’t want to give away any more than he already had.  
  
“Technically,” he said, muffled, “there was no body, so you never actually b- ”  
  
“I meant it metaphorically, Dean.”  
  
“Always with the big words, Sammy.”  
  
Dean glanced over his shoulder, and the mood was broken. Sam chose relief over whatever other strange ache was making its way through his stomach.  
  
“First thing tomorrow,” Dean said, “we go get my wheels. Your taste in cars sucks.”

*****

They ate fast food burgers for dinner at the only table in Sam’s apartment. Sam was too big for the flimsy matching chairs, and Dean wondered how he’d spent months in the place without breaking one. His cheek felt swollen and puffy, and he figured he’d have a bruise there tomorrow. It felt kind of nice. Familiar.  
  
When they were done, Sam puttered around in his little kitchen while Dean sipped at a beer. The place already looked pristine to Dean, but Sam took his time rinsing out their coffee cups from the morning, wiping down the cracked, yellowing counter top, throwing away the greasy paper towel Dean had left lying there.  
  
“I always knew you’d make a good housewife,” Dean said, because silence made him itchy. Sam didn’t answer, but his shoulder blades heaved a sigh of exasperation. Dean’s head was hurting fiercely, and only unconsciousness would take care of it. He’d be fine until Sam went to sleep. If Sam went to sleep.  
  
Sam turned when he was done, out of things to do with his hands. He leaned against the counter and looked at Dean uncertainly.  
  
“Dean,” he started, uncomfortably. “I have a girlfriend.”  
  
“Did I ask?”  
  
And then just because Sam had started it, Dean backed him against the sink, reaching around to set his empty bottle down with a metallic ring. Sam had always been like a damn furnace, and Dean indulged himself for a moment, feeling Sam’s warmth brush against him in brief licks.  
  
Sam kept his long fingers locked on the edge of the counter, and his eyes flicked up, over Dean’s head.  
  
“Becca, right?” he said, and Sam looked at him, dazed.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Your girlfriend.”  
  
“How did you – ”  
  
“Stalker, remember?” Dean said. “She’s very hot. Very classy.”  
  
Sam turned his head away, and Dean could see the birthmark on his neck, the scar on his chin from when six-year-old Dean pushed him too hard and sent him flying onto pavement.  
  
One of Sam’s hands came off the counter to cup Dean at the waist, and Dean was pretty sure Sam didn’t even realize he was doing it, the absent way his thumb was rubbing circles. He felt the slow burn of it up his legs, and it made him hard in his jeans. Dangerous territory. Dean’s head was pounding, and Sam was warm and solid, but it wasn’t going to happen. He took a step back, and he heard Sam let out a breath.  
  
“So glad you approve,” Sam muttered after a minute. He was sulking, and Dean smiled.  
  
“Sleep tight,” Dean said.

*****

Dean used to be able to sleep for twelve hours straight, if he had Dad or Sam watching his back. In Purgatory, he learned to sleep in two hour spurts, strung together over the course of a nighttime. There was no day in Purgatory; the sky was endlessly black and threatening, the better for all the monsters to circle each other like pack animals.  
  
Castiel didn’t sleep, which came in handy for Dean. But they inevitably had to move after a few hours, running from some new threat. In Purgatory, Dean got a taste of what it was like to be hunted, not hunter. He’d spent his whole life seeking out evil to kill, but Purgatory was evil’s turf; Dean had to choose between hiding and dying. It was in his nature to be loud and cocksure, more reckless than smart. It was only Cas that had kept him alive for the first few weeks, forcibly shushing him, dragging him from one shelter to the next, convincing him with icy blue eyes that if he wanted to survive long enough to get back to Sam, he’d stop and think before attacking the next creature he laid eyes on.  
  
Dean listened to Sam tossing and turning again and had to fight the urge to go to him. He was pretty sure he had a few techniques that would put his brother right to sleep, but Sam had drawn a line. It was normal, Dean thought. It was the way they’d done it their whole lives. They’d been on the road for years, but Sam was a girlfriend kind of guy. It made sense that he’d fit one into his new life.  
  
Dean checked the clock. He could probably fit in four hours of sleep if he was lucky. He closed his eyes.

*****

_“A vampire and a werewolf walk into a bar,” Dean says. “They order a few drinks and two humans for dinner. When the waiter brings their food out, the werewolf gets right to eating his guy, going straight for the heart, but the vampire lets his meal go. The werewolf asks his buddy what’s wrong, and the vampire says ‘He was a lawyer. Professional courtesy between bloodsuckers.’”_   
  
_Dean looks at him expectantly, and Castiel frowns. “I don’t understand. How did he know his human was a lawyer?”_   
  
_“It’s a joke, Cas,” Dean says. “You’re supposed to laugh, not ask questions.”_   
  
_“We’re in a very dire situation. I don’t think it’s an appropriate time for levity.”_   
  
_Dean sighs. “Nevermind.”_   
  
_It’s a memory, and Castiel prods at it, trying to figure out why it keeps turning over in his mind. Dean has gone back to his own world, but Castiel doesn’t remember him being any funnier there. Sam and Bobby never really laughed at Dean’s jokes either, so Castiel thinks the fault is probably with Dean._   
  
_He waits on a rock that has sheltered him and Dean several times over the last few months. Eventually something will come, and he’ll have to move. There are things here that are stronger than him, creatures long disappeared from God’s world that he needs to be wary of._   
  
_He thinks Dean has probably found Sam by now, and that they’re looking for the stone. They won’t find it in time. Castiel tried to warn him, but Dean generally doesn’t listen. He wants to pray, but lately God seems further than ever. Or maybe God’s been there all along, and it’s just Castiel he’s stopped listening to. He can’t come to his Father with a clean heart anymore, can’t even offer up the excuse of pure intentions. He has hurt as many people as the worst kind of demon, and if Purgatory is a kind of penance, then Castiel has to accept it._   
  
_He thinks of Dean instead, and the things he knows about Dean that he shouldn’t: the cadence of his breath, the precise way his eyes look when he’s missing Sam. Castiel has existed for over two thousand years. Eighteen months should feel very short, but it doesn’t._   
  
_He hears the branches to his right rustling, and he moves on._


	3. Chapter 3

  
**Chapter 3**

_Thursday_   


  
Despite Dean’s assertions, they took the morning bus to the garage where Sam had stored the Impala. Dean caught his breath a little when the sun hit her. She sounded gorgeous, purring her way up to him as the attendant drove her out. Sam must have been paying a fortune to house her. She was shiny and waxed, rims gleaming like new. Dean would have preferred to see Sam driving her instead of storing her, but Sam had started his explanation with the phrase “carbon emissions” and Dean had tuned the rest out.  
  
Dean slid into the driver’s seat and felt like he was home for the first time.  
  
“Where to?” Sam asked, tone light despite the shadows under his eyes. Dean couldn’t stop smiling, running his hands over the steering wheel.  
  
“Who cares?” he said.  
  
They drove two hundred miles without stopping, as fast as the engine would push them, and Sam didn’t bug him about it even once. They stopped somewhere in the middle of the desert, pulling over so Dean could shrug his way out of the car and tip his head up at the painfully bright sky. His pale skin was burning, he knew. He wanted it. If he couldn’t find the stone, he’d be going back to constant night, so he might as well get his cancer rays now.  
  
He stripped down to his t-shirt, and Sam stretched out on the hood of the car, watching him indulgently. Dean couldn’t remember the last time Sam had smiled like that, no tension in his face, dimples showing, hands shoved into his pockets in an easy slouch. Dean hollered something joyfully indeterminate at the sky, and Sam laughed.  
  
They drove back at a more sedate pace, stopping at the storage unit where Sam had stashed Dean’s stuff. They loaded up the trunk in content, sun-drenched silence, and Dean had to stop himself from smiling every time he felt the casual brush of Sam’s bare arm against his.  
  
They were back on the road, headed for Sam’s apartment, when Dean felt the smallest sliver of sensation through the base of his neck, a silver flash of pain that disappeared as quickly as it came. His hands jerked a bit, and the Impala skidded over the center line and back again.  
  
Sam was looking at him, eyebrows raised as if to say “What the fuck?”  
  
“Twitchy,” Dean said in response. “Too much caffeine.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Sam said.  
  
“And you know that that means,” Dean continued, doing his best to re-direct Sam’s attention.  
  
“Let me guess,” Sam said drolly. “Time to eat?”  
  
“Damn straight.”  
  
Denver didn’t have much in the way of diners, but Dean was damned if he was going to eat at an Applebee’s or some other shitty chain, so they drove around until they found an acceptable substitute. The South Main Grill had cracked plastic booths and tabletops underlaid with local newspaper spreads going back to the 1920s. The music was too country for Dean’s taste, but all the waitresses wore bright cowboy boots and ponytails, so everything evened out.  
  
“Hey,” Dean said, reading one of the old headlines through the cloudy plastic covering. “’Local woman levitates over playground – police suspect hoax.’ What do you think – demon or ghost?”  
  
“I think it was some reporter making shit up,” Sam said absently, scanning his menu. “Depression-era newspapers weren’t exactly accountable for – Dean?”  
  
But Dean barely heard him through the blinding pain in his head. Fire hammered into his skull, and he gasped, curling into himself.  
  
 _Teeth splitting through gums, the wet sink of claws into flesh, blood soured by night and magic…_  
  
He could vaguely hear commotion around him. His shoulder slammed into something hard, wrenching the wrong way, but Dean could only press tight fists against his temples, like he could press out the pain if he tried hard enough.  
  
 _The thing facing her is just an animal, more a natural disaster than a sentient being. Not one of mother’s best. It snarls, and she takes a step back. It’s stronger, but she’s smarter. She leads it in a slow dance, backing herself into a tree. Everything tastes like shit in Purgatory, but her family’s hungry and this thing has enough blood to last for a week.  
  
It follows her, hackles raised like some gigantic dog. She feels her teeth prick free, not in hunger but in self-defense. Almost there.  
  
It steps on the trap she neatly avoided, and then the silver net is propelling up from the ground. Up goes the beast with it, howling in pain and fury as the silver sears its skin.  
  
“Got you,” she says. “You stupid shit.”  
  
The beast severs one chain link with its teeth, searing its mouth with blood and charred hair, and the whole trap falls apart, crashing to the ground. It takes less than a second before it’s on her, dragging the chain with it, covering them both. The first rip at her neck is excruciating, and she screams. Claws sink into her sides, ripping ferociously. They dig in deep, touch organs, split them open.  
  
It starts eating while she’s still alive, the thing is stupid, it doesn’t _know _to kill her first, doesn’t know how to make her dead it’s going to start from her insides and all she can do is scream and twist and…._  
  
“Dean!” Sam pressed down on his shoulders, pinning him to the floorboards, and Dean opened his eyes and saw chipping plaster, a white spinning ceiling fan, and Sam. Sam’s eyes were panicked, his hands tight on Dean’s shoulders.  
  
“Sammy,” he rasped, just to feel the word in his mouth. His head ached, and shudders still raced through him.  
  
“God, don’t move. They called 911.”  
  
“No,” Dean said. “No, I’m fine.” He rolled to a sitting position, ignoring Sam’s protests.  
  
“Dean, you had a seizure,” Sam was saying. “It’s okay, I have insurance, you need to get checked out, something’s wrong.”  
  
“I said I’m fine,” Dean said, harsher than he’d intended, and that’s when he realized he’d attracted a circle of attention. All the employees and half the customers stood around him and Sam, looking down with various degrees of concern and fascination.  
  
Fucking humiliating.  
  
“I don’t need a doctor,” Dean said, enunciating very clearly so that there was no way Sam could misunderstand. “We should go. Now.”  
  
Sam drove them back to his apartment so fast that Dean’s head swam dizzily. The pain left a faintly nauseous pit in his stomach.  
  
“When we get back, you’re going to tell me what’s going on,” Sam said, quietly furious. His eyes were on the road, but Dean could see the pinched expression on his face, clear in the deepening sunlight. “I want the whole truth this time.”

  
*****

“It’s not a big deal, so don’t get your panties all bunched,” was how Dean started. The insult barely registered in Sam’s brain.  
  
“You  _screamed_ ,” Sam said. “You have no idea. I thought…” Dean had seized up in a way Sam hadn’t seen since hellhounds clawed him open. He’d collapsed to the floor, and then he’d stopped moving, and Sam couldn’t stop thinking  _what is it_ , _what got to him_ ,  _how could he just up and die again now_....  
  
“First of all,” Dean cut him off, “I don’t scream. I yell. In a manly way. Second of all,” he spread his arms wide. “I’m fine, Sam. I’m not dead, I’m not demon chow. I’m fine.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Sam asked again, and Dean sighed.  
  
“It’s this deal I made,” he admitted. “I might have left out a couple details.”  
  
“Oh, I think you left out more than that.”  
  
All the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck rose to attention. He knew that voice. He whirled.  
  
“Did you miss me, boys?” Meg asked, one dark eyebrow arched.  
  
Sam reached a hand for his sheathed knife, but Dean was already moving, gun drawn, backing her toward the door.  
  
“That’s not very nice,” she said. “Not after I saved your asses from Dick.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re a real saint,” Dean said. “I thanked you every night from Purgatory.”  
  
Meg’s eyes were wide and solid black, arms out to her sides in a gesture of surrender. “I just got this body patched up,” she said lightly. “I’d prefer not to get another hole through it.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam said. “Crowley took her back into the pit. He probably sent her here.”  
  
“I know that, Sam,” Dean growled. To Meg he said, “Why are you here?”  
  
“Dean,” said another voice, and Sam looked. Castiel stepped through the door, eyes steady and sure. “I brought her. She’s here because of me.”  
  
If Sam was surprised, Dean looked  _stunned_.  
  
“Cas,” he breathed. “How…I thought you were…”  
  
The three of them eyed each other in a strange, hostile triangle. Dean looked like he was two second from putting a bullet through Meg, and then maybe turning the gun on Cas, and even if it wouldn’t hurt either of them much, gunfire wasn’t something Sam wanted to explain to his neighbors.  
  
“Okay,” Sam said. “Okay. Ceasefire.” He stepped in the middle of them, hands up in surrender. “Let’s all just put our weapons away, okay? If we’re gonna do this, let’s at least not do it in my apartment.”  
  
“Sam, move,” Dean said, and Sam glared at him.  
  
“You’re gonna shoot an angel and a demon for…what?” he asked. “To piss them off?”  
  
“I’m all for making the demon bitch bleed,” Dean said. “And I’m not convinced that’s Cas.”  
  
“I’m me, Dean,” Castiel said. As if to prove it, he reappeared between Dean and Sam, two inches from Dean’s nose, and lifted the gun out of Dean’s hand. Dean stumbled back a startled step, then launched an instinctive punch at Castiel’s nose. Castiel took it without blinking, and Dean shook out his hand, wincing.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he said unsteadily. “So it’s him.”  
  
“Believe it or not,” Meg said, “We’re here to help you.”

  
*****

“I get visions,” Dean said. “No, not like yours,” he added sourly when Sam sharply turned his head. “It’s not the future. It’s stuff that’s happening right now. Only…not here, now.”  
  
“Purgatory,” Sam supplied, and Dean nodded, gaze lowered to his rough hands. His eyelashes were long and tipped gold from their few short hours in the sun. Sam made his eyes look somewhere else.  
  
“My head starts hurting,” Dean said. “And then I get dizzy and…” he made a motion with his hands. “Boom. Monster-vision.”  
  
“Is it getting worse?” Castiel asked intently.  
  
“Better, actually,” Dean said, shrugging. “The first week, I could barely pick my head up. Now, it mainly happens when I sleep.”  
  
That’s what Dean had been doing for a week, Sam realized. Getting his visions under control. Sam didn’t know if he was angrier about the lies, or about Dean’s stupid, self-sacrificing impulses. If he hadn’t gotten his head straight, he wouldn’t have shown at all – Sam was sure of it.  
  
Castiel didn’t ask anything else, and his expression didn’t change. The insanity had gone from his eyes, and Sam wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It left him a lot more useful and a lot scarier. He looked as concerned as Castiel ever looked, which was to say: not very. There was something in the set of his shoulders that looked like tension, though.  
  
“This is all really fascinating,” Meg drawled. “Can we get to the part where none of you can find the stone and Dean goes back to monster land?”  
  
“Why is she here again?” Dean asked Castiel, and Castiel sighed.  
  
“Tell him,” Meg said. “Tell him who got you out of Purgatory, angelface.”  
  
“Why would you do that?” Sam asked sharply.  
  
“Why would  _Crowley_  do that,” Meg corrected. “Now that he knows how to open the doors, do you really think he’s letting it lie? Every eclipse is like a revolving door for demon spies.”  
  
“So Crowley sent you…to get Castiel out of Purgatory…to help us find the stone?” Dean looked at Sam, eyes narrowed. “Any of that sound right to you?”  
  
“Nope,” Sam said stonily.  
  
“Look,” Meg said. “Crowley sent me to bring the stone back to him. It has some serious power attached to it. It’s how Eve kept control of the Leviathans down there, kept them from killing everyone. Crowley wants it. He thinks if he gets it, he can get control of Purgatory, too.”  
  
“Demonic merger,” Dean said. “Great. So why are we trusting you?”  
  
“Because,” Meg bit out. “I’ve been trapped in the pit for over a hundred years, now. Do you remember what that’s like?”  
  
Sam remembered. His brain went a sharp, bloody red at the thought. He didn’t see Lucifer any more, but he still woke up with the feeling of hot knives fading from his skin.  
  
“Hey,” Dean said forcefully, glaring at Meg. “No Hell talk. Got it?”  
  
Meg rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Wouldn’t want to send Sammy off the deep end again.”  
  
“She’s convinced me that her intentions are pure,” Castiel said. “Or at least, pure for a demon. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I trust that she wants to keep the stone from Crowley as much as we do.”  
  
“I managed to convince him that he’d turned me,” Meg said. “I’m going to help you, and all I ask in return is that, when you have the stone, you make him suffer.”

  
*****

Sam wanted to start sifting through Meg’s information right away, but Dean’s eyes were heavy by the time Castiel and Meg finished filling them in. If Dean’s visions were anything like Sam’s had once been, they were unpleasant and exhausting. Meg wanted to stay and watch Sam’s flat screen, but Sam kicked them both out, angel and demon, to fend for themselves for the night.  
  
Dean was on his side on the couch when Sam finished brushing his teeth, eyes smudged with exhaustion and hand hanging off the side. Sam lowered himself to the floor, watching him.  
  
“Will it happen again tonight?” he asked quietly.  
  
“Probably,” Dean said in a blurry voice.  
  
It wasn’t the time, but Sam couldn’t stop himself. “How could you not tell me?” he accused. “Me, of all people? You think I wouldn’t understand visions? Seeing fucked up things you have no control over?”  
  
“Didn’t want to worry you,” Dean said, and he must be really tired if he was admitting shit like that.  
  
“I wish you’d told me,” Sam said, feeling angry and confused.  
  
Dean closed his eyes. “I don’t mean to keep leaving you alone,” he said, slow and rough. “I don’t know if have a chance of finding this thing, and I didn’t want to saddle you with my crazy, too.”  
  
Sam leaned in and kissed him, hand against his sandpaper jaw, tongue tracing his bottom lip. He was still half-furious, but he’d seen Dean pass out today, unconscious on the floor, and he needed to feel that Dean was alive. Dean turned into the kiss, one hand cupping the back of Sam’s head. Sam shuddered as his body reacted to the taste and smell of Dean.  
  
Sam deepened the kiss, tilting his head so that Dean’s mouth opened under his. Dean felt so fucking familiar, and he’d been gone so fucking long. Sam groaned a little, wondering if he could just crawl inside Dean’s mouth and live there, shut the rest of this shit out.  
  
He broke away, panting, and rolled his forehead against the cool leather of the couch.  
  
“I thought you had a girlfriend,” Dean said into his left ear.  
  
 _It doesn’t fucking matter_ , Sam wanted to scream. When had it ever mattered what the hell else was going on when Dean was in trouble. When Dean needed something.  
  
Dean didn’t need anything tonight, Sam realized. He was exhausted, breathing just barely picked up from their kiss. It was Sam who wanted more.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said into the couch, and then pushed himself away.  
  
Dean was asleep when he came back into the living room, arms full of blankets. He stretched out on the floor, feet sticking out three inches past the foot of the sofa. He folded his pillow in half, trying to spare his skull from the hard floor. Dean’s hand still dangled over the side of the couch, and Sam fell asleep, looking up at it.

  
*****

Dean’s first vision that night wasn’t a vision at all, but a memory. The Nephilim held out the fruit, and Dean wouldn’t have eaten it for a million bucks back home. Maggots writhed in and out of the soft, brown skin. Wilted leaves hung from the stem.  
  
“You know this isn’t right,” Castiel said to him, and Dean tuned him out.  
  
“One bite, and you can leave” the Nephilim said. Even in the shadow of his hood, Dean could see his mouth curve. “What have you got to lose?”  
  
“What happened the last time you made a demon deal?” Castiel asked, and Dean remembered Sam slowly sinking in his arms, bleeding and limp. It was a demon deal that Dean knew he’d make again, even with everything that had followed.  
  
“I’m no demon,” the Nephilim said, “and I’m no trickster. The terms are simple: bring me the stone, and you stay with your brother. Fail, and you come back here. Nothing lost.”  
  
“He wants you to fail,” Castiel said urgently. “Can’t you see that?”  
  
The Nephilim was impossibly tall, imposing in his brown cloak. Dean couldn’t see his face, and he was just fine with that.  
  
“Why me?” Dean asked. “There are a million creepy crawlies here. Why are you letting me go?”  
  
“They belong here,” the Nephilim said. “I can’t let them through. It’s the rules. But you…”  
  
He held out two pieces of the rotting fruit, one to Castiel and one to Dean. Castiel didn’t even spare his a glance. Dean took his, staring.  
  
“One month,” the Nephilim said. “Half of you here, half of you there. And you know the consequences if you fail to return?”  
  
Dean was thinking of Sam, hopeless and stumbling, fucking demons, whoring himself out for revenge. Consequences either way.  
  
Castiel put a hand on his arm, stilled the movement of Dean’s hand toward his mouth.  
  
“Cas, I have to,” Dean said.  
  
And Cas turned to face him, twisted up a fist in Dean’s collar and put his face very close.  
  
“You have no concept of the consequences,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ll bring down.”  
  
“It’s  _Sam_ ,” Dean said.  
  
“Don’t do this,” Cas said. “You can’t – ”  
  
Dean put the fruit to his mouth and bit.  
  
He jerked awake from his dream as the hellish landscape dissolved under him. Sam’s apartment spun around him, tilting as Dean tried to get his sense of gravity back. He sat up quickly, pressing fingers against his temples. When he opened his eyes again, everything had settled.  
  
Sam was asleep on the floor beneath him, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but did. He stepped over his lightly snoring form and headed for the sink, splashing water on his face.  
  
He had left Castiel in Purgatory, with his warning and his fear. He’d been so blind in his need to get back to Sam; he hadn’t even dreamed that Sam might be doing fine, that he might be normal and safe and maybe in love.  
  
It should have made him feel better. No matter what happened, Sam would be fine. Even if they didn’t find the damn stone, Sam would survive.  
  
Dean climbed over the back of the couch and slid under the blankets. Sam stirred at the soft sounds but didn’t wake up. Dean was pretty sure it was the first time Sam had slept since he’d been back.  
  
He’d made it worse, he realized. Sam had buried him, metaphorically speaking. He didn’t need to be dragged back into the life, but Dean hadn’t left him any choice. Because now that he was home, he wanted to stay. Damn, he wanted to stay. He wanted the Impala and greasy food, Metallica and machetes and Sam, looking at him from under too-long bangs, watching him for the next move. He wanted his fucking brother, and he’d forgotten how much until Sam had looked at him from the passenger seat, all lazy smile and sharp, bright eyes.  
  
 _I’m your weakness_ , he’d told Sam a long time ago.  _And you’re mine_.  
  
He went back to sleep and saw two shifters tear each other apart, tangled in sinew and blood.


	4. Chapter 4

  
**Chapter 4**

_Friday_   


  
Arkansas, was Meg’s only real clue.  
  
They took a day to gather what Dean figured they would need. Sam had made a clean break from hunting, and that meant he’d trashed, sold, or given away whatever he hadn’t considered strictly necessary.  
  
“Dude, where’s my beretta? The one with the silencer?” He shoved through the cardboard box where Sam had stashed his stuff, but all he came up with was one sawed-off and a crappy revolver he hadn’t bothered to clean in years.  
  
“Dean, that thing isn’t even legal in Colorado.”  
  
“So you just gave it away? That hurts, Sammy.”  
  
Sam opened his closet door and reached up to the top shelf to pull out a locked, fireproof safe that measured a foot and half across and ten inches deep. Dean had tried and failed to break the padlock off of it when he’d rooted through Sam’s closet for the lockpick.  
  
Sam spun the numbers into the right combination, then tilted it open toward Dean so he could see inside. Three silver flasks, a flare gun, a dismantled hand grenade, a container of salt, Ruby’s silver knife, and Dean’s ivory-handled Colt, all packed into a neat arrangement.  
  
“I didn’t get rid of this one,” Sam said, and tossed the gun to him.  
  
They needed more – a few stakes, dead man’s blood, and enough guns and knives that they could both sufficiently arm themselves. Sam had a contact – whoever had helped him ditch his hunter’s gear in the first place – and they met up with him in a tiny, run-down duplex in a Denver back alley. He ran a business out of the second floor, and he let Dean and Sam browse through a truly blinding array of weapons.  
  
They picked up three gallons of industrial cleaner on the drive home, just in case.  
  
They spent the rest of the day packing the Impala, loading everything into the weapons cache. Dean could remember his father doing this, showing him what to pack where, and how he later showed it to a sullen Sam. The car had smelled wrong when he first picked her up – like wax and vacuumed rug. By the time the sun set on Friday, she smelled like oil and gunpowder, leather and hot metal.  
  
“There you go, baby,” he crooned. “All better. I know how lonely you’ve been.”  
  
“You have a complex,” Sam told him. “There’s seriously something wrong with you.”  
  
They set out on Saturday, away from the chunky spread of the Denver skyline. Dean took the first shift, Sam in the passenger seat and Meg and Castiel sharing the back like some screwed-up family vacation. They picked up a makeshift brunch at a drive-through on the way out of town – hashbrowns and microwaved eggs and watered-down coffee.  
  
“You stain the seats, I’ll kill you,” Dean said, watching Meg lick salt and grease from her fingers.  
  
“Ooh, talk dirty to me more,” she said, and wiped her fingers over the plump vinyl.  
  
Sam had to yell at him to keep him from pulling them over right then and there.  
  
Castiel stared out the window, hands folded patiently on his lap. “I should spend more time in the plains,” he said. “There’s more here to see than most people imagine.”  
  
Sam poured over archived newspaper articles on his iPad, looking for anything that might point them in the right direction.  
  
“Here,” he said, an hour over the Kansas border. “The population in a little place called Watson has dropped over fifty percent in the last two years. The state police are attributing it to a bunch of different things – freak accidents, families moving on without leaving word, and some local feuds. There’s one article, though, that suggests it’s something more ritualistic. I guess a few of the families were found slaughtered in their homes, drained of blood.”  
  
“So, vampires,” Dean said.  
  
Sam didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” he said. “What kind of vampire could wipe out a whole town? We’ve seen them take two, maybe three people at once, but five hundred people in two years? Isn’t that a little…?”  
  
“Careless?” Meg chimed in. “In case you haven’t noticed, most of your hunter buddies have been busy with bigger fish in the last couple of years.”  
  
Dean shifted uncomfortably, and he saw that Sam and Cas were doing the same. It was a sad day when the demon in the car was the only one who hadn’t had a direct hand in the apocalypse.  
  
They stopped to eat between Wichita and the Oklahoma border, and Dean felt like he had come home. The diner had two cracked windows and a layer of grime on the exterior so thick that Dean wasn’t sure what color it had originally been. Inside, the floor tile was chipping but clean, and the bottle-red waitress who sat them called them all honey and winked at Cas.  
  
“I’m in the mood for breakfast,” Dean announced to no one in particular. “Pancakes and sausage.”  
  
Sam peered out at the darkening sky. “It’s eight-o’-clock, Dean.”  
  
Dean flipped the menu around and pointed. The top declared in faded orange letters, “Breakfast All Day!”  
  
“Whatever makes you happy, dude, ” Sam said, with an eyebrow lift that indicated his not-so-private opinion of Dean’s tastes. There was no sign of whatever weird fear had compelled him to camp at Dean’s feet, and Dean had to be grateful for that. He needed Sam ready to fight, not mope. If they had any hope of finding the stone, they were going to have to stow their issues for later.  
  
“You two are just adorable,” Meg said.  
  
Sam took the wheel after they had eaten. Dean’s head was aching again, and he knew it wouldn’t be long. He was determined to be asleep for it, so he didn’t freak out again. It was bad enough in front of strangers; in front of Meg and Cas it would be unbearable.  
  
“Here,” Sam said quietly, passing him two pink tablets. “For the headache.”  
  
“Headache? What headache?” Dean lied, and Sam sighed the put-upon sigh of little brothers everywhere.  
  
“Whatever,” he said. “Just shut up and take them.”  
  
Dean didn’t think it was that kind of headache, but he swallowed them anyway.  
  
And Sam was a dirty liar, he thought ten minutes later, because no headache medicine he’d ever taken had made him drowsy like this.  
  
“Did you slip me a mickey?” he slurred through a world gone fuzzy.  
  
“You need to sleep,” Sam said. “I know you’ve been waking up every couple hours. There’s no way you can hunt like that.”  
  
“Bitch,” he said, without much malice. He thought about informing Sam that he’d managed to stay alive for eighteen months in a piranha pit by sleeping in fits and spurts, but before the thought was even fully formed in his head, he was asleep.

  
*****

  
“Thanks,” Sam said to Castiel, and Cas nodded. He was the one who had dropped the pills into Sam’s hand on their way out of the restaurant, saying, “Maybe he’ll listen to you.”  
  
He wouldn’t have, Sam thought, but Sam wasn’t above drugging his brother if it got the job done. Dean slept against the window, still and relaxed.  
  
“We’re talking forty vamps, maybe more, for that kind of damage,” Meg was saying, and Sam made himself focus.  
  
Castiel shook his head. “Purgatory is still having an effect on me. I don’t know how long it will be before I’m myself again. I don’t think I’m strong enough to take care of forty vampires at once.”  
  
“I guess it’s the old-fashioned way then,” Sam said, trying to hide his frustration. He and Dean had barely managed one on their own.  
  
“Sam,” Castiel said, leaning forward. “I want you to know that I cautioned your brother against this course of action. I thought then, and I still think, that it’s suicide.”  
  
Sam glanced in the rearview mirror to meet Cas’s eyes. Whatever had happened in Purgatory, it had cleared that shamed, scattered look he’d worn before. His gaze was steady and age-old.  
  
“But you’re helping anyway,” Sam said, and Cas sighed, just a little.  
  
“Of course,” he said, resigned, and sat back.  
  
They made it to Little Rock just before sunrise. Sam’s eyes were gritty from the long drive, and he pulled into the first vacancy sign he saw. Dean was just starting to stir, and Sam nudged him awake.  
  
“Here,” he said, shoving Dean’s duffel at him. “We’re about a hundred miles out, and I need to sleep.”  
  
“I can take over,” Dean said, blinking. His skin had a translucent quality in the early morning light, soft freckles over sculpted cheeks, too-long eyelashes flicking up sleepily. More pretty than dangerous, and Sam knew he’d get a fist in the face for ever saying that out loud.  
  
“No,” Sam said plainly, “you can’t. You slept, but we both need food, and we need to do more research before we walk into some vamp-infested hellhole.”  
  
“Jeez,” Dean said blearily. “Who died and made you general?” It was a little funny in a dark way, but Sam managed a glare, and Dean sighed and dragged himself out of the car.  
  
Sam was pretty sure he could have fallen asleep in the middle of a prison riot, but Dean shut the door in Meg’s and Castiel’s faces, ordering them to make themselves useful while the humans slept.  
  
“I can’t deal with the afterlife twins right now,” he said, shuddering. “They’re creepin’ me out.”  
  
Sam smiled into his pillow. He listened to Dean stumbling around the room, the sleeping pills still screwing with his reflexes. He didn’t bother to take off his sneakers or his sweatshirt, and sometime between Dean grumbling about the noisy air conditioning and the ratty bed covers, he fell asleep.

  
*****

  
Sam dreamed of the mystery spot and Dean’s thousand deaths, all linked together in some panic-soaked blur. He should have been used to Dean dying by now, but every death seemed to get worse. Dean had been ripped to shreds in front of him, screaming over Lilith’s laughter, and Sam still had nightmares about the life fading from Dean’s eyes, the way he convulsed and choked, then went still and limp, not blinking or breathing or moving even a little.  
  
After Lilith, Sam had kept himself drunk for a month straight. He was too hazy to think in specific terms –  _Dean’s cartoon impressions, Dean’s quirked eyebrow_. Instead, he’d wake up in the middle of the night, shaking and nauseous, some grasped-at memory leeching from him.  
  
Ruby would say Dean’s name, and Sam would get a flash of them standing back to back, Dean’s shoulder blade knocking into his own every time the rifle discharged. Dean’s amulet would cut into his chest, and he’d see it against Dean’s skin, cradled there like it was something important. He could never quite put into words what it was he missed about Dean, or why he was ready to burn the world to ash to get him back. He just knew that Dean’s absence had left him scarred and ugly. He felt disfigured, inside and out.  
  
Once the alcoholic haze had crystallized into the need for vengeance, he’d stopped trying to work logic into it. He’d failed Dean in a way that Dean had never, ever failed him, and the only thing left was to make Lilith pay in the way that Dean would have wanted.  
  
His absorption with Dean was what had screwed both of them over in the end, and Sam had vowed that it wouldn’t ever happen again. He’d moved on this time – gotten a job, gotten a life, gotten himself safe. He’d promised himself that he was out for good, but he hadn’t imagined Dean coming back. He hadn’t thought he’d ever feel this awful desperation again.  
  
He had failed to save Dean, almost consistently. Castiel was certain of their failure this time, too, and that was never a good sign.  
  
He relived Dean’s blood coating his hands, and the blank, dead stare of his eyes.

  
*****

  
Sam woke up at noon to see Dean propped up on the other bed, laptop open and running.  
  
“Dude, listen to this,” Dean said. “These deaths started less than a month after Dick touched down. Before that, Watson was just your average shithole.”  
  
“So it’s something to do with the Leviathans,” Sam said through a yawn. “But that doesn’t mean it’s this stone thing. Maybe it’s just a whole lot of vampires, living it up.”  
  
“You ever heard of forty vampires rooming together?” Dean asked skeptically. “Because I haven’t. Most we’ve ever seen is a dozen, and even that was weird.” He shook his head, turned back to the laptop. “We’re on the right track, Sammy. I can feel it.”  
  
Sam’s stomach growled loudly enough that Dean’s eyebrows shot up. They walked to a tiny coffee shop ten minutes down the road and had eggs and hashbrowns. Dean smothered his in enough Tabasco to make them soggy, and Sam’s stomach turned a little. It wasn’t until they were leaving that he realized he hadn’t called Becca since he’d left a message on Thursday night.  
  
“You go ahead,” he told Dean. “I have to…uh.”  
  
She picked up after the first ring. “Sam?” she said. She sounded panicked, and Sam squeezed his eyes shut. “Jesus Christ, do you know how worried I’ve been?”  
  
Very worried, if the stockpile of unanswered text and voicemails on Sam’s phone was any indication.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. He made his most contrite face, the one Dean always mocked, and hoped that it might somehow project through the phone.  
  
“How hard is it to answer a text message and let me know you’re alive?” Becca was saying in a low voice, and even though she sounded furious, Sam knew he had scared her badly. The Sam she knew didn’t pick up and disappear for days on end. Everything had happened so quickly since Dean’s return. Sam had almost forgotten that he was normal now, that he had other relationships to answer to.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I should have called. I’m okay.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You leave me this message saying you’re going on a road trip with your brother, but you don’t say where or when, you don’t answer your phone. I didn’t even know you had a brother!”  
  
He could picture her, eyebrows lowered, hair all pulled up in her weekend ponytail, cross-legged on her living room floor. He should be there right now. Dean had always been better at the sweet talk. Sam was better in person. He’d had a lot of practice smoothing over Dean’s sneers with his own offers of sincerity. Over the phone, he bumbled.  
  
“Sam?”  
  
How to explain Dean? He rubbed a hand against his forehead.  
  
“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” he said finally. “I wasn’t expecting him, but he just showed up. Dean’s…kind of unpredictable.”  
  
He could almost see her trying to puzzle it out, to see through everything he wasn’t saying.  
  
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked softly.  
  
“No, I swear I’m fine.”  
  
“You just took off from work? What about your classes? That’s not like you.”  
  
Man, Sam didn’t miss this part of the job. The lies didn’t roll off his tongue like they would have two years ago. A perfect stranger would have been able to tell he was hiding something, and Becca was far from a stranger.  
  
“I can’t tell you,” he said with effort. “I can’t explain right now. Please, you just have to trust me.”  
  
“When are you coming home?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted.  
  
She was silent for a long moment. “Why can’t you tell me? Maybe I can help.”  
  
“It’s…it’s really complicated,” he said. “I wish I could tell you more, but…”  
  
“I can’t stand being lied to, Sam.”  
  
Sam swallowed, out of excuses. He couldn’t tell her anything else, and he couldn’t make any more excuses when she sounded like that.  
  
She hung up on him. In the six months they’d been together, she’d never so much as raised her voice. Sam stared at his phone for a second. He wanted to hurl it at the ground. He was irrationally angry with Dean for showing up and pulling him back in so thoroughly. He was angry with Becca, for not being able to trust him through this unknown territory. And he was angry with himself, for constantly forgetting that normal wasn’t in his genetic makeup. He’d been fucking bred by angels and demons, and it seemed fate was always trying to remind him that all he was good for was hunting.  
  
He trudged back to the motel, fingers white-knuckled around the phone in his pocket.

  
*****

  
Watson didn’t have enough people left for any sort of industry. Even the closest bar was fifty miles away, so that’s where they started. On a Sunday night the place was just barely dotted with regulars – drunks and farmers and high school dropouts with nowhere else to go. They worked their way inward from opposite ends of the bar, trying to blend in and striking up conversation with anyone who would talk. Had anyone heard anything strange about Watson? Were there any noticeable newcomers? Did anyone have any theories on the disappearances?  
  
Dean got into a conversation with a leggy brunette in a denim skirt, and Sam let him be for twenty minutes. By the time he turned around again, Dean’s head was close to her own, eyes wandering down over her tits like it was a done deal. It probably was.  
  
He kept questioning anyway, and Dean kept ordering more drinks for the brunette, and when Sam had finally exhausted everyone willing and sober enough to talk, Dean was escorting her out the door, one hand slung around her waist.  
  
“Hey,” Sam said, catching them in the parking lot. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” The brunette’s eyes flicked over him with interest, and he glared back.  
  
Dean froze, caught. “Well, uh…Sasha here. She has a place down the road. She offered to show it to me. Real nice, these Arkansas folks.”  
  
“You don’t think we’re a little busy for that?” Sam asked impatiently.  
  
“Sam,” Dean said. “Eighteen months. No girls.”  
  
Sasha didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, but she giggled anyway, hand creeping up to Dean’s neck. The look on Dean’s face was so desperate and pleading that Sam huffed irritably and took a step back. “Your funeral,” he said, which was a little mean but rolled off Dean just the same.  
  
“You’re the best,” Dean said, bright eyes and megawatt grin. “Catch you in the morning.”  
  
“Right,” Sam said. “Whatever.”  
  
The only lead he picked up from the night was a tale from the bartender of four strangers that had come in a few weeks ago. Two couples had made a scene, going so far as to knock one of the regulars out by slamming his head against a pool table. They’d walked out without paying, and apparently scared everyone enough that no one attempted to chase them. They’d never been back.  
  
Sam got the name of the regular, then called it a night.  
  
By the time Dean stumbled in at ten the next morning, Sam had been up for three hours. He’d put together two fake IDs for them, proclaiming them U.S. Marshals, and he was finishing scribbling down the directions to Lenny Browning’s house.  
  
“Let’s go,” Sam said. “You have ten minutes or I’m leaving without you.”  
  
Dean groused something and slammed the door to bathroom behind him. Sam hoped he had a bitch of a hangover. Served him right, ditching the hunt like that when it was his ass they were trying to save.  
  
Sam took great pleasure in licking bacon grease from the corners of his mouth while they drove. Dean was looking slightly green beside him, eyes hidden behind dark glasses.  
  
“Fun night?” Sam asked innocently, and Dean gave him the finger.  
  
Sam had been picturing Lenny Browning as a skinny white dude with a beer gut, but the woman who answered his door was a graying little wren of a thing in her fifties.  
  
“Hi,” Sam said, trying for an open smile. “We’re U.S. Marshals Vaughn and Bristow, and we were hoping we could talk to Lenny.”  
  
The woman peered up at them, brown eyes stricken. “I’m Lenny’s sister,” she said. “Lenny’s dead.”

  
*****

  
“So, guy gets knocked out by some strangers at a bar, vows revenge to anyone who’ll listen, and three days later he turns up dead in his own living room, drained of blood,” Dean recapped.  
  
“Vampires?” Sam said.  
  
“Definitely vampires. Dude, I’m starving.”  
  
They hit a gas station mart so Dean could fill up the tank and grab the soggiest ham sandwich Sam had ever laid eyes on.  
  
“Two hours ago you were puking on the side of the road.”  
  
Dean shrugged, a tiny bit of mayo at the corner of his mouth. “I bounce back.”  
  
They had left Castiel and Meg at the motel for research purposes, although Castiel could barely work a computer and Meg was the laziest demon Sam had ever seen. Sure enough, they were both watching the fuzzy television set when Sam and Dean walked in, Castiel squinting at the screen like it was a mystery he was still trying to puzzle out.  
  
“Nothing for me?” Meg asked, eyeing the plastic wrap in Dean’s hand.  
  
“I have a knife with your name on it, sweetheart,” Dean said, and Meg said, “Ooh, scary.”  
  
Lenny’s sister had mentioned two of Lenny’s friends, so they made plans to interrogate tomorrow. Then Dean kicked Meg and Castiel out of the room, pulled the shades, and collapsed on his bed, suit and all.  
  
“You’re gonna wrinkle it,” Sam said, “and I’m not ironing it.”  
  
“Thanks mom,” Dean said, but he started stripping off his tie, right where he lay. The silk knot came undone, and the tie fluttered to the floor. The jacket was next, then the white dress shirt, limp from a day in the heat. Dress shoes kicked away, belt undone, slacks peeled off in a shimmying dance that Sam couldn’t pull his eyes away from. Dean turned on his stomach, boxers and t-shirt pulling against the lines of his hips.  
  
“Was it worth it?” Sam asked, and Dean turned his head to grin, secretive and content.  
  
“You have no idea,” he said, and closed his eyes.  
  
“You know, I think Becca might dump me over this,” Sam continued conversationally, and Dean groaned.  
  
“Can we not do this now?” he said, cracking one eye open.  
  
“No, let’s do this now,” Sam said, and he hadn’t realized quite how furious he was until this second. “I picked up and left everything to find this stone because you said you needed it. Where do you get off leaving me all by myself while you go bang some redneck chick?”  
  
Dean pushed himself up on his side, eyes narrowed. They had that unfamiliar glitter to them again. Sam was reminded of Dean at his most resolved, some creature at the end of his shotgun, seconds from death.  
  
“You said it was fine,” Dean said dangerously, and yeah, Sam had told him to go. Because Sam didn’t want to throw a fit in the middle of a bible belt bar and have Dean mock him for the rest of his life.  
  
“I was obviously lying,” Sam said stiffly, and Dean rolled his eyes.  
  
“Could you be any more of a girl?”  
  
“Could you be any more of a douche?” Sam countered, and as far as comebacks went it was a little weak, but it was enough to make Dean’s face tighten.  
  
“Are we still talking about a chick, here?” he asked.  
  
Sam looked away, studying the corner of the darkened room. “Forget it,” he said, hearing the bite in his own voice. “Just…never mind.”  
  
“Good,” Dean said. “Because this conversation sucks.” He lay back down, but Sam could tell by the stiffness of his shoulders that he wasn’t sleeping.  
  
Sam wanted Becca. He wanted his apartment, and the familiar bus route of the morning, and the beer-and-lemon smell of the bar where he worked. The last time he had a home it was Stanford, but after Jess had died Stanford had stopped being a safe place. Denver was still there, everything waiting for him just as he’d left it.  
  
He slammed out the door, past the parked Impala, and headed down the road toward the coffee shop. He passed it and kept going, every breath mixed with asphalt grit and waning sunlight. When his head had cleared enough, he turned around and walked back to the motel.  
  
Dean was sleeping for real when he came in. Sam went around the bed and picked up the discarded pieces of his suit, draping them over a chair back. The motel room didn’t have an iron, anyway.


	5. Week Two; Chapter 5

  
** Week Two **

**Chapter 5**

_Tuesday_

Lenny Browning had carpooled ninety minutes back and forth each day to a steel mill outside of Little Rock. According to Lenny’s sister, his driving companions were two fellow workers named Bob and Jeffries. They’d been the last ones to see Lenny alive.  
  
Whatever happened to Lenny had scared them badly. Bob slammed the door in Sam’s face the second he mentioned Lenny’s name, and by the time they got to Jeffries, he had been warned and refused to let them in.  
  
He and Dean broke in the back way and cornered Jeffries against his lopsided couch with two drawn guns.  
  
“Sit,” Dean ordered, just as Sam said, “We’re not going to hurt you.”  
  
He flashed Dean an exasperated look –  _honey, not vinegar, idiot_  – and slowly lowered his own firearm to the side table.  
  
“Look, we just need to ask you some questions,” Sam said, and Jeffries’ eyes darted nervously to Dean.  
  
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, southern accent thick as butter. “Talkin’s what got Lenny killed.”  
  
“From what I hear, Lenny had a big mouth,” Dean said. “The three of us - we’re just having a private conversation.”  
  
“Okay, okay,” Jeffries said, swallowing convulsively. “Maybe put the gun down.”  
  
Dean tucked away his automatic, and Sam said, “Okay, no guns. Now tell us – what happened to Lenny?”  
  
The story came out in halting bits and pieces, no linear logic to speak of, but Sam managed to piece it together over an hour. Lenny had lost fifty bucks to some stranger in a game of eight-ball, and he’d started flinging bottles of beer. He’d gotten a concussion for his troubles, and had gone around for a week afterward, telling everyone he met how he was going to get revenge. He, Bob, and Jeffries had tracked the four strangers to an old warehouse outside Watson, but when they got there, they lost the nerve to do anything but smash a window with a rock.  
  
“I saw,” Jeffries said wildly. “When we was leaving, I saw them watching us through the windows. I told Lenny, but he didn’t - ” He took a shaky swallow of his gin.  
  
“Next night, Bob an’ me went to Lenny’s place after work, like always. Only Lenny was on the floor, dead.”  
  
“Is there anything else you noticed?” Dean asked. “Weird markings or a lot of blood loss? Maybe his heart was missing?”  
  
Jeffries went even paler, and Sam glared at Dean. Almost unconsciously, Jeffries’ hand drifted to his neck. “A bite,” he said in a small voice. “Like animal fangs. It’s crazy, but if it wasn’t for all the gin, I’d think - ”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said. “You’d think right. Where is this warehouse?”  
  
“I can’t!” Jeffries wailed immediately, and Sam never realized how unsettling it was to see a grown man with a beer gut blubbering into his hands. “They’ll find me, they’ll know…”  
  
“Jeffries,” Dean said, clearly losing patience. “If they were going to find you, they would have done it already.”  
  
That didn’t seem to pacify Jeffries the slightest bit, so Sam took over. “Look,” he said gently. “I know you’re scared. But these people took something from us that we need back. You’re our only lead. I promise that they’ll never trace it back to you.”  
  
It took ten minutes of coaxing, but Jeffries finally came out with it, verbally sketching a map from the bar to the warehouse. Sam got another tall glass of gin into him, and by the time they left, Jeffries’ panic had dulled into a glassy-eyed fatalism.  
  
“Gonna find me,” he was mumbling as Sam and Dean took their leave. “She’s gonna…”  
  
Sam’s ears perked. “She?” he asked, turning back around.  
  
Jeffries looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed and watery. “The blue-eyed woman. The one who knocked Lenny out cold.”

  
*****

Watson was one of the most broken-down places Sam had ever seen.  
  
There was no town to speak of – just a red clay road lined on one side by abandoned buildings. There was the ghost of a post office, a restaurant, a filling station. All the windows were shattered, and Sam guessed that everything portable had been pillaged long ago.  
  
Beyond the main drag there were houses in various states of disrepair, set back in wheat fields every hundred feet or so. Dean drove the Impala slowly down the depressing tableau. Every once in a while there was a face at a window, blurry through the dusty streaks, but most of the houses seemed empty. Sam had seen poverty, but Watson was extreme enough to shock him.  
  
There was one house that stood by itself, shattered windows and rotting porch proclaiming it abandoned. Dean pulled the car off the road and tucked it out of sight behind the building. It wasn’t exactly incognito, but it would hide the car well enough unless someone knew to look. Sam knew without asking that they’d be sleeping there tonight.  
  
Another mile down, the road split, both paths leading through thick woods. The left fork would take them toward the next main road and the Mississippi border, Jeffries had said. The right fork would take them to the warehouse, where he, Bob, and Lenny had tracked the blue-eyed woman.  
  
They left the Impala and went on foot, following the right fork. They walked in relative silence. Sam fell in step beside Dean, and every once in a while, he’d see Dean reach back and check that his automatic was still in its rightful place.  
  
When they’d put some distance between Meg, Cas, and themselves Sam stepped in closer.  
  
“Why?” he asked quietly. “I don’t get why vampires would be hiding something from Dick. They had to know it would make them a target.”  
  
Dean tilted his head. “Maybe they weren’t hiding it from him. Maybe they were hiding it for him. In exchange for protection.”  
  
“A bargain,” Sam said slowly. “They kept the stone, and Dick let them live.”  
  
“Or,” Dean said. “Leverage. Dick was planning on killing off the vampires. This nest somehow ended up with stone, and it kept the Leviathans away. That’s why there are so many of them.”  
  
“Vampire refugee camp.”  
  
“Bingo.”  
  
They slowed when the warehouse came into view, slipping into the surrounding woods. It was the middle of the day, and the nest would most likely be sleeping, but it couldn’t hurt to be cautious.  
  
The warehouse was two stories tall, roof sloped like an old farmhouse. The pitted road narrowed to a clearing of stiff grass and scattered dirt, and in the middle sat the drab structure. It had probably served as grain storage in the fifties, before the entire area had gone to poverty. Now it was just another abandoned building, crumbling from the heat and storms.  
  
They counted three entrances. Sam had hoped to get a read on how many vamps they’d be dealing with, but every window was blacked out, and the entire clearing was eerily silent. They’d have to go in blind.  
  
They turned and traced their steps back to the main road.

  
*****

The house had one bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and an open space that had probably once made up the dining room and living room. There was no running water and no electricity, which was inconvenient but not a deal breaker. A long time ago, Ash had rigged up a system for them to charge pretty much anything using the Impala’s engine, so as long as they had gas, they’d be fine.  
  
“So,” Meg said. “What’s the plan? Go in guns blazing, Winchester style?”  
  
“Research,” Sam said firmly. “Try to figure out if they really have the stone, before we get ourselves killed.”  
  
He sent Meg and Cas to case the town for the number and location of the remaining civilians.  
  
“Come on then,” Meg sighed. “It’s you and me, angelface.” Castiel followed her out the door obediently. He’d seemed awfully content in her presence ever since Dean left him in her care at the mental hospital.  
  
He and Dean sketched up the best plan they could manage with ten-to-one odds.  
  
“You know, maybe it’s not there,” Dean said. “Maybe we’re jumping the gun.”  
  
“Okay, well if you have any other leads, now would be a good time to mention them,” Sam said impatiently.  
  
Dean lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I’m just saying. Even if they don’t hear us coming, this plan sucks. If they hear us coming, we’re screwed.”  
  
“Then we’ll have to be really, really quiet,” Sam said.  
  
The plan, as far as Sam could figure, consisted of dead man’s blood and machetes, a few explosives, and a fuckton of luck. He wasn’t sure why he and Dean kept counting on luck to save their asses when it was clear the universe had it out for them, but Sam didn’t really see any other choice.

  
*****

The screaming woke Sam. His first thought was that Dean was having another vision, and he was on his feet in a moment, eyes searching in the dark. But Dean was sitting up on his own makeshift bed, eyes wide and head cocked.  
  
It came again, high-pitched and terrified, and Dean scrambled for his gun. Sam grabbed a handful of his shirt and held him back.  
  
“Wait,” he whispered. “Just – ” He pointed at the window, and they both crept over, trying to see out without exposing too much of themselves. Meg and Castiel were on their feet in the back half of their shelter.  
  
Outside, someone was dragging a girl down the center of the main. She was maybe seventeen, dressed in sweatpants and a tangle of long hair. She dug her heels in, screaming and twisting, but he hauled her along with one hand. Even in the dead of night, Sam could see the razor-sharp teeth of her captor, coated in saliva and gleaming in the moonlight.  
  
“Elizabeth Manning,” Castiel said quietly. “She lives with her grandmother. We saw her this afternoon.”  
  
“Shit,” Dean said, and then he was up again, heading for the door, swiping his machete from the ground as he went. He’d charge out into the street to save her, Sam thought, and he’d kill the vampire without thinking, and he’d alert the whole nest that hunters were in town. Their only advantage would be gone. They’d be dead before they made it out of Watson, never mind the stone.  
  
“Dean!” Sam caught him at the door, grabbed his shoulder. “You can’t, man. You can’t show yourself.”  
  
“Are you fucking crazy?” Dean said. “That freak is gonna kill her!”  
  
He was close to yelling, and Sam jammed a hand against his mouth, shoved him against the wall. “I know,” he said, voice low. “But you can’t give us away. Dean, you – ” Dean went for his gut, but Sam knew him too well. He blocked most of the impact with an awkward forearm, even though the force was enough to shove him back a step.  
  
“ _Cas_ ,” he gasped.  
  
Castiel was there an instant later, two fingers on Dean’s temple. Dean crumpled, and Sam caught him, pinning his dead weight up against the wall. Outside the girl screamed, voice breaking with terror…and then stopped.  
  
Sam saw them from the corner of his eye as the vampire moved past them, carrying her now. Her blood dripped in a trail behind them, thin and black on the dirt.  
  
“Shit,” Sam said, pressing his forehead against the roughened wood. He’d just turned a teenage girl over to a hungry nest of vampires, without lifting a finger. Dean slumped against him, silent and unconscious, and Sam took pains to lay him out carefully, head back on his pillow of crumpled up clothes.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Nice,” Meg said, hushed and impressed. “Didn’t think you had the stones.”  
  
“Shut up,” Sam said without looking. He studied Dean’s face, pale and stubbled, tightly lined even in unconsciousness. Dean was going to yell, and maybe try to beat the shit out of him, and Sam couldn’t make himself regret it even a little. His world had narrowed to finding that damn stone, and he’d sacrifice more than one person to make sure it happened.  
  
He lay back down on his own sleeping roll. Adrenaline still thrummed through him, diluted by guilt and worry. “Make sure I wake up before he does,” he said to Castiel. “We have to talk, and I’d rather not let him get a weapon first.”

  
*****

_The ground is shaking. The trees are superimposed over each other, too many branches crowding up the night sky. She loses her footing, heels slipping in the pool of blood around her. There’s no death in Purgatory – not really. They are all already dead, but that doesn’t mean they can’t tear each other to shreds over and over._  
  
Half her calf is ripped out, stuck in the teeth of the thing who did it. It’s advancing on her now and…  
  
…the tree branch spears him right in the center of his back, cuts through the center of his spinal cord, and he loses control of his limbs, feeling them jerk and dance through the bubble of blood in his throat…  
  
...its jaw opens wider than her head. She hears the crunch of her own pharynx before she feels the pain, and her head is wrenched back, the world turned upside down…  
  
…it yanks him off his hook, and tosses him. He wants to crawl, but he left an arm behind, so he inhales dirt instead. This isn’t a creature that eats, it’s a creature that tortures to hear the screaming. It flips him over…  
  
…she comes back to herself in an empty ditch…  
  
…the first slice of claws rips through his stomach…  
  
…the blood has dried…everything turns in on itself…there are only the trees stretching toward blackness.

  
*****

Sam was staring at him when Dean crawled out of unconsciousness. It took a second, but everything came back to him in a rush. The girl, the vampire, Sam’s panicked face, Castiel, and then nothing. He felt empty, sick and betrayed, and numb with anger.  
  
The pain in Dean’s head was a dull pressure – manageable for the moment, but promising full-scale bombardment later.  
  
“So what,” Dean said, hand over his eyes. “You and Cas making contingency plans without me? Do I get a say, or is there a secret handshake?”  
  
“It’s not like that.”  
  
“Really? Because it felt like my brother and my guardian angel went all  _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_  on me.”  
  
“There wasn’t any other choice. You would’ve given us away. Surprise is all we’ve got going for us, here.”  
  
“C’mon, Sam. Since when do we let innocent people get eaten to save our own asses?” Dean pulled his legs into himself, thought about getting up, and decided against it. There was fucking angel mojo in him, making his limbs wobble. “  
  
“Since you made another deal,” Sam said, voice rising. “And I have to keep you alive. You would have done the same if it was my ass on the line, and you know it.”  
  
“That’s…”  
  
“It’s not,” Sam cut him off hotly. “It’s not different at all.”  
  
“Well, thanks for that, Sammy. Real heartwarming. Makes me feel much better about the girl we just sent off the blood factory. Where the hell are Cas and Meg?”  
  
“I sent them out to get supplies,” Sam said. “Because we need to talk.”  
  
“I think we’ve talked enough,” Dean said, deciding to risk his legs after all. They felt noodly, unsteady under his weight, but they held.  
  
Sam was blocking the door before Dean even got close, all six-plus feet of him planted stubbornly on the floor boards.  
  
“Move,” Dean warned.  
  
“No,” Sam said. “You know, you don’t hide things nearly as well as you think you do. You’ve been different since you got back. And I don’t know if it’s guilt about leaving Cas or anger at me for not finding you, but you need to get over it. We’re all risking ourselves to save you from this thing, and you’re acting like you don’t care what happens.”  
  
Dean stared him down, trying to keep the snarl from his face. He’d been waiting for this since Sam had hit him almost a week ago, anticipating the boil. “Move,” Dean said, “or I’ll make you.”  
  
Sam only shifted slightly, chin jutting in a way Dean recognized. Dean went for his solar plexus, a hit to disable but not wound. He got a hard shoulder instead, as Sam turned into the strike. They both went down under Sam’s weight. Dean brought a knee up viciously, aiming for anything that would make Sam curl off of him. Sam had learned to use his size a long time ago, though, and Dean found himself pinned, legs nailed under Sam’s heavy knees, struggling to breathe around the forearm pressed to his chest.  
  
“You’re…not…leaving,” Sam panted, bearing down as Dean squirmed. He managed to get an arm free long enough to jab it into Sam’s unprotected side, and Sam hunched over, wincing. Dean twisted up and hit him. It caught Sam square across the face, harder than Dean intended, and Sam collapsed back, laid out on his side.  
  
Dean shoved himself to his feet, swearing. Sam wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed, and there was blood on his mouth. Dean dropped to his knees, hands on his brother’s face.  
  
“Sammy,” he said. “Hey. Look alive, man.”  
  
Sam blinked his eyes open dazedly, eyes about a million different colors swirling together, and Dean breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
Sam rolled a little bit, shaking his head around like his brains were sloshing. Dean pulled him to his feet with a fistful of jacket, steadying him when he stumbled a little.  
  
“You suck,” Sam mumbled, and Dean smiled.  
  
“You’ve been out of the game too long,” he said. “I’m almost embarrassed for you.”  
  
Sam’s hand was still on his shoulder. Dean touched the blood on his lip. “It’s fine,” he said. “It might swell.”  
  
“I punched you,” Sam said grudgingly. “I guess I deserve it.”  
  
Dean felt light all of a sudden, his balloon of anger from the last week popped like the cut on Sam’s lip, bleeding and free.  
  
“Look, I….I care,” he said out of nowhere. So easy, when they were like this. Sweaty and bloody and tired. Worn out and alone, skin stinging from knuckles and pads of fingers and too-tight grips. “I care about getting out of the deal. But not if it means other innocent people have to die. At least I knew what I was getting into. That girl never saw it coming.”  
  
Sam was looking down, somewhere in the vicinity of Dean’s collar. His shoulders lifted with every breath, and Dean watched their movement, waiting. Sam stepped closer, and Dean’s back met the wall. Sam put a hand on his neck and kissed him, long and desperate, metallic and wet from his split lip. Dean opened his mouth under the onslaught, grabbing at Sam’s hair, feeling his knees bend. He closed his eyes so he couldn’t see whatever heartbreaking thing was in Sam’s expression.  
  
Sam’s hands slid down along his ribs, down to his belt, covered his hipbones and held on, bruisingly hard. Just a whisper, and then Sam, too, was sliding down, mouth hot through Dean’s thin t-shirt. Dean leaned back against the wall, lifted his hips and just let Sam undo his belt buckle, quiet clinks in the empty room.  
  
He felt Sam’s long fingers on the back of his thighs. He was already hard when Sam touched him, thumb drifting over the tip of his cock. Sam made a little sound, helpless and wanting, and Dean put two hands in Sam’s hair and pulled his head closer. Sam swallowed the head of his cock, tongue working in fast, hurried strokes.  
  
It wasn’t that Sam was particularly adept. Sam was goofy and awkward and too big in almost every way, and Dean assumed he’d had more blow jobs from his own brother than from women in his life time. But Sam hung on to him, and his long fingers might as well have been hooked in Dean’s soul instead of Dean’s skin. Dean knew that Sam would be hard, too, that Dean could blow him or fuck him or do nothing but kiss him for hours on end, and Sam wouldn’t let go until Dean made him.  
  
It took three minutes to come, maybe less, and Dean probably should have been embarrassed about that. He slid to the floor instead, Sam still kneeling between his spread legs. Dean dragged his head down with a hand on the back of his neck, licking at Sam’s cock-swollen lips. He put a hand over Sam’s crotch and rubbed until Sam came, jerking against him.  
  
They huddled against the wall for a few minutes, bodies cooling to stickiness and breathing evening out.  
  
“No blow jobs in Purgatory?” Sam asked. His voice was deep, shot through with sleepy satisfaction, and Dean shivered.  
  
“We have to move, or Meg and Cas are gonna get an eyeful that sends all four of us to Hell,” Dean said. Now that his head was clearing, he could feel the unfinished floorboards sticking to his bare skin. He’d probably be pulling splinters out of his ass for days. His thighs were cramped, spread too wide to accommodate Sam’s bulk, and he was pretty sure Sam was falling asleep against him.  
  
“Up, Sasquatch,” he said.  
  
Sam moaned, but staggered to his feet, his shorts stained and sticky. Dean followed him, tugging his pants back up. They probably should have thought this through better, Dean thought. They had no shower, and the nearest stream was two miles back, at least. They had bottled water and rags, though, and they took their time cleaning up, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. It was one thing to come together in the moment, pulled by anger and near-death and a lifetime of close proximity. It was always another to look around once the pheromones had cleared and realize that they were still brothers, always and forever, no matter how many times they put their hands on each other  
  
By the time Cas and Meg came back with a week’s worth of gas mart supplies, they were each in their own corner of the cabin, weapons laid out for cleaning, laptop open and keyboard clicking.


	6. Chapter 6

  
**Chapter 6**

_Friday_  


  
Dean woke gasping. The vision was a horrific echo in his brain, pressing in.  
  
“Dean?” Sam asked sleepily.  
  
“I’m fine,” Dean said. “Go back to sleep.”  
  
He waited until Sam’s breathing settled into soft snores again, and then he pulled himself to his feet and made his way silently out of the cabin.  
  
Cas was standing by the parked Impala behind the cabin, hands in the pockets of his coat. He stared at Dean’s approach like some eerie sentinel.  
  
“Yo,” Dean said, and Castiel nodded.  
  
Dean opened the door and reach in the driver’s side compartment to pull out a fifth of Jim Beam. He twisted open the plastic cap and seated himself on the hood while Castiel watched. He held out the bottle in what he considered a pretty damn generous offer. It was the middle of the night, and there was still someone else’s blood sloshing around inside his head, and he didn’t share his booze very freely on the best of days.  
  
“I don’t see the point,” Castiel said sincerely. Dean shrugged and kept drinking.  
  
“You had another vision.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
“Give the guy a prize,” Dean said around the burn in his throat.  
  
“They’re getting worse.” Also not a question. Dean had spent eighteen months living back-to-back with Cas in Purgtory; he’d get to the point when he was ready.  
  
“What do you see?” Castiel asked, cocking his head, and Dean chuckled darkly.  
  
“Same thing I saw when I was there. A bunch of freaks of nature tearing each other apart. Only now…”  
  
“Now what?”  
  
“I  _feel_  it,” Dean said. “Some vamp gets decapitated,  _I_  get decapitated. A shifter sheds his skin, _I_  shed my skin. I know what they think. I’m not just in Purgatory, I’m  _in them_.”  
  
“That’s…upsetting,” Castiel said, eyes narrowed, and Dean toasted him with the open bottle. The alcohol was making its way through his blood, turning his muscles loose and numb.  
  
“You know,” Dean said. “At first I saw you.”  
  
That got Cas’s attention. He frowned. “Me?”  
  
“Yup. Well. I was you. Talk about creepy.”  
  
“You felt what I felt,” Castiel said, like it bothered him. Dean wasn’t sure why. Castiel had never hesitated to vent exactly what was in his mind over the last year and a half. Especially when it concerned Dean and Dean’s shitty choices.  
  
“Do you still…?”  
  
“Nope. Purgatory-only deal. Once you got out, my brain moved on.”  
  
Castiel sat down next to him on the car, very carefully. It was unnerving to see him make such a casual movement. Castiel crouched when he needed to spring, sat if he was drained, flickered from one place to another for attack or escape. When he wasn’t moving, he stood and stared. There was no reason for him to slide next to Dean, to put himself close enough that Dean could almost feel the whisper of his wings. It was something new, and uncomfortably human.  
  
“You should tell your brother that it’s getting worse.”  
  
“Why, so he can furrow his eyebrows at me all day? Forget it.” Dean discarded the idea immediately and thoroughly, ignoring the little spark of panic that idea started in him.  
  
“He has a right to know what will happen…if you fail.”  
  
“Nothing will happen,” Dean said, final and flat. “If I fail, I go back. End of story.”  
  
“The risk – ”  
  
“There’s no risk, Cas.” His voice had risen, he realized. He forcefully unclenched his shoulders and took another drink. Castiel was looking at him, always staring, except this time he looked pitying.  
  
“Look,” Dean said, controlling his voice with effort. “I’m not gonna do anything stupid. Neither will Sam, as long as you keep your trap shut.”  
  
Cas didn’t look away, and it was like a shiver on Dean’s skin. “All right,” he said finally.  
  
The bottle was nearly a quarter empty, and Dean had been sober for too long for that amount of whiskey to leave him untouched. It washed over him in increments, shaking his nerves loose. This had been his father at forty, Dean realized. Too many secrets and mistakes, too much grief  _not_  to hit the bottle when he could.  
  
Castiel looked away eventually, tipping his face up to the starry sky, and Dean followed the white line of his throat. He had put his mouth there just weeks ago, pressed dents into Cas’s side to see if he could bruise an angel. Cas remained always pristine, steady and untouched, no matter what Dean did.  
  
“You’re happy to be with Sam again,” Castiel said. Another not-question that Dean wasn’t going to bother with. The whiskey was playing havoc with his hormones. He’d blown his payload into Sam’s throat hours ago, but he couldn’t stop remembering Castiel pinned under him on the hard-packed ground, the flicker in his blue eyes at every new sensation. Dean had never been good at celibacy, and thank god he’d taken one of the pretty angels with him to Purgatory. He thought he might have gone insane if Cas hadn’t been there.  
  
“I never said thank you,” Dean said gruffly, shaking himself out of it. “I probably would have died in there without you. So…thanks.”  
  
“You don’t have to thank me for anything,” Castiel said. “I wouldn’t thank me, if I were you.”  
  
Dean knew he was remembering blood on his own hands, innocents slaughtered. Dean had been there often enough to recognize the look. Cas’s betrayal had been sharp and unexpected, surprisingly painful. Now, though…  
  
It was an old wound. It ached, but it was just a shadow of the anger that had once been. Cas was forgiven, and Dean wondered if he’d ever be able to say that out loud, if Castiel would even believe him.  
  
He offered what he could, instead. “The visions are changing,” he said. “It’s like…they’re multiplying. Two things happening at once, sometimes more.”  
  
“That’s the side effect of the deal you made. It will keep getting worse. You might die before your month is up.”  
  
“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” Dean said dryly.  
  
“What would you have me say?” Castiel asked, the barest edge of annoyance in his voice, and this at least was familiar territory.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Dean said. “You told me so.”  
  
The moon was gone, the sky still pitch, and almost a quarter of the bottle had disappeared.  
  
“I need sleep,” Dean said. “Watch my baby. Don’t let the vampires get her.”  
  
He left Cas on the hood of the car, hands lost in the folds of his trenchcoat, staring at the night sky.

  
*****

Sam figured it out, just like he eventually figured out everything Dean had ever tried to hide from him, ever.  
  
Dean started to vibrate with impatience as the hours passed. He was a caged animal, pacing his way around their confined space in way that drove Sam insane. Sam gave him tasks: go re-fill the water bottles, sharpen the machetes, wash his damn socks before they all died of the stink. A twitchy Dean worked best with direct instruction.  
  
Sometimes Sam sent Meg with him, just so Dean could take his ADHD out on someone else for a few hours.  
  
“Plan B,” he said to Castiel, while Dean and Meg were re-organizing the weapons cache for the twelfth time. “What is it?”  
  
Cas looked at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“Back-up,” Sam said impatiently. “This can’t be it. Cas – we’re going up against a whole nest. Even if the stone is there – which is a big if – they’ll probably squash us before we even get close. We need another option. In case.”  
  
“You should ask Dean,” Cas said, not meeting his eyes.  
  
“I’m asking you.”  
  
“I don’t have an answer for you.” Castiel was never a very good liar. Sam guessed it came with being a servant of God, and all.  
  
Sam watched him calmly. Not threatening. Not yet. “What do you know?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re – ”  
  
“Don’t screw with me, Cas. Not about this.”  
  
Castiel finally lifted blue eyes to his. Caught. Guilty.  
  
“There’s no Plan B,” Castiel said. “The stone is your only option. And Dean knows that.”

  
*****

Sam lost it when he confronted Dean. Dean in turn lost it with Cas, and Meg laughed at them all.  
  
Only it wasn’t really funny.  
  
“He fails to send himself back, and the two parts of his soul separate,” Castiel had said.  
  
“What does that mean?” Sam asked wildly.  
  
“It means he dies,” Cas said. “And in the process, tears open a hole between the two worlds.”  
  
“Opens the gate for whatever wants out of there and into here,” Sam said numbly.  
  
“Possibly,” Castiel said calmly. “Or possibly the whole wall comes down. No Purgatory, no Earth, just one big dimension full of every monster God and Eve ever brought forth.”  
  
There weren’t enough hunters in the world, Sam thought. Humans would be gone within a week.  
  
He yelled at Dean ( _Why didn’t you tell me?_ ) and Dean yelled at Castiel ( _How could you tell him?_ ), and when they were both screamed out, staring each other down, red-faced and hostile, Sam said, “How do we stop it?”  
  
“That,” Dean said darkly. “That right there is why I didn’t tell you. We don’t stop it, Sam. We get the stone. End of story.”

  
*****

Sam researched. He sat in the Impala, because he was too angry to look his brother in the face, and he scoured every supernatural site he could find for something, anything that might help.  
  
His phone rang steadily – Becca, the bar, the college – and he ignored it.  
  
After the sun had set, Dean slid into the passenger side of the Impala. It was disorienting to see Dean in the shotgun seat. It only happened when he was bleeding or asleep, and he was neither at the moment.  
  
“Stop it,” he said. “Sammy, stop. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy.”  
  
Sam ignored him like he ignored his phone. One impatient look, and then he tuned it out.  
  
“There’s no way around it. You don’t think I looked?”  
  
Sam brought up a spectacularly graphic message board about blood bonds and didn’t answer. Dean reached over and hit the power button, wiping the screen blank.  
  
“If you think turning the computer off will make me stop looking, then you’re a complete fuckwit,” Sam said, staring straight ahead.  
  
“They know, Sam,” Dean said, hand rubbing his face. “They know who you are, who we are. The Nephilim – this is why he offered this deal to me. He knew you’d go off half-cocked. He’s counting on it.”  
  
“Is that what Cas said?” Sam asked, low and clipped. He was still angry. He was more than angry. He was fucking terrified, even more than when this had begun. He realized that in the back of his mind, he’d always been counting on some fallback plan. Some miraculous last minute ass-pull that would save Dean. Even if they failed with the nest, he’d believed Dean would be all right, just like always.  
  
Now, the stone was it. Full stop.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said, resigned. “Cas said it. A lot. Loudly. But he didn’t have to. I knew anyway. I knew when I took this deal that there was only one way out.”  
  
“I don’t believe that,” Sam said stubbornly, and Dean reached over and put a hand on his thigh.  
  
“Don’t try to distract me,” Sam warned, and Dean huffed a laugh. He leaned into Sam, hunched over the gearshift, knees bumping into the side of Sam’s thigh. Sam put a hand in his hair and clutched, because he couldn’t help it.  
  
He thought Dean might slide into his lap, lower the seat and press them both down. Instead, he pushed up Sam’s shirt and put his mouth on Sam’s stomach, sucking hotly. Sam held him there with two hands, let his tongue work over ridged skin until Sam felt like he might pop out of his jeans.  
  
He was painfully hard, laptop abandoned on the dashboard.  
  
“I hate you so much,” Sam mumbled, even as Dean was moving up, tongue over his nipple, hands pressed to the window and the leather seat to hold himself up.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said, vibrating against his skin. “Keep talking.”

  
*****

John Winchester had taught both his boys to lie with a fluency and frequency that would have shocked any other parent. Dean had never questioned it when he was growing up. He could easily swallow his father’s explanations – for Sammy’s safety, for everyone’s protection. Besides, they were Winchesters. They were different. School room morality didn’t apply to ghost-battling, gun-wielding, monster-fighting superheroes.  
  
They had practiced their cover stories with their father over and over until he was satisfied with their performance, and they had watched him lie to the people around him more than he ever told the truth. He charmed their teachers, talked his way around Social Services, and hustled more pool than Dean could keep track of.  
  
They had both learned from a master, and maybe that was why they could never lie to each other.  
  
Sam thought he was being sneaky, keeping his laptop turned just away from Dean’s view, surreptitiously following Cas into the back bedroom, sliding a sheet of paper to cover the title of some clunky book he’d been lugging around. Dean snuck a peek at the title when Sam’s back was turned, but it was in some weird language Dean couldn’t read, so he wasn’t sure why Sam had bothered.  
  
Sometime, when he walked into the room, Sam and Castiel stopped talking and jerked their eyes away from each other so quickly that they might as well have waved a neon flag in Dean’s face that read, “We’re hiding something! Ask us what!”  
  
Cas was usually an easy mark, but the way he kept his eyes averted told Dean he’d better find an alternate source of truth. Luckily, they’d brought along one irritatingly long-lived demon with a hard-on for Winchester drama. She’d have to do.  
  
“Okay,” Dean said, cornering her while Cas and Sam were having a supposedly covert powwow by the Impala. “What’s going on? Why are Cas and Sam sneaking around like Bill and Monica?”  
  
“Tawdry affair, huh?” Meg said without looking up. She was reading one of the  _Hustler_  magazines that she’d lifted from Dean’s duffel. He’d yelled at her the first three times, and then resigned himself to the fact that it was kinda hot seeing a chick flipping through those pages. Even if she was a demon chick that he’d sooner gank than touch.  
  
“I know you know. You’re always lurking around. Like a cockroach.”  
  
“That hurts, Dean,” Meg drawled. “I thought we’d gotten past all the distrust.”  
  
“Look, we’re in this together now, whether I like it or not. Whatever asinine plan they’re working affects you, too.”  
  
“Don’t count on it,” Meg snorted. “First sign of trouble and I’m out of here, revenge or not.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Dean said with his sweetest smile. “You’re Cas’s bitch now. You think there’s somewhere you can run where he can’t find you?”  
  
Meg lifted her eyes from the pages to subject Dean to a withering stare. “If you two yodels don’t manage to get the stone, I’m going back to hell anyway, and not even Castiel can pull me out of there.”  
  
Dean peevishly snatched the magazine from her hands and stomped away, ignoring her exclamation of protest.  
  
“Fucking demons,” Dean muttered, shoving the magazine back into his duffel.  
  
“Ask Sam about the book,” Meg said from behind him. “That’s your answer.”

  
*****

“You’re not gonna like it,” Sam said frankly.  
  
Dean held up the tome impatiently. “What. The hell. Is this?”  
  
Sam looked at Cas. Cas sighed and pressed his hand against the embossed cover. The nonsensical symbols wavered and cleared, and then Dean was looking at bold English letters, stenciled in a straight line across the cover.  
  
 _Blood Magic_.  
  
Dean looked up. “What the hell, Sam?”  
  
Sam sighed. “Page three-forty-seven.”  
  
Dean flipped through the newly legible pages. He passed diagrams of graphic human sacrifice, sharply drawn sigils, numbered lists for poisons and rituals.  
  
“We don’t do this,” Dean said tightly. “This is witch crap. This is what we hunt.” He could almost feel his father’s wrath from Heaven or Hell or nowhere land or wherever the hell he had ended up.  
  
“Yeah, well playing by the rules hasn’t exactly worked for us, has it? We don’t have the advantage here, Dean. We have to use what we can get.”  
  
Dean scanned the page Sam had pointed out to him, trying to make sense of it. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You want to make a bridge?”  
  
“Not exactly,” Sam said. “More like…an anchor. There’s a ritual – it temporarily bonds us together. Keeps your soul from going nuclear. You stay alive, Purgatory stays intact.”  
  
Dean didn’t want to feel it, but he couldn’t help it. Hope, tiny and stubborn, poked its way into his brain.  
  
“What’s the catch?”  
  
Cas opened his mouth, but Sam surged on. “No catch. We have everything we need here – my blood, your blood, something you own, some symbols and some Latin chanting and we’re good to go.”  
  
“What’s this?” Dean frowned. “Blood of the ‘maker’? What’s the maker?”  
  
“Well,” Sam glanced uneasily at Cas. “Okay, so we’re still working out that one tiny little thing. But we have time. And we have everything else.”  
  
Castiel was strangely silent, and Dean glanced at him. “Cas? What is it?”  
  
Dean watched the dance. Sam’s eyes to Cas’s – a sharp warning. Cas’s eyes to Dean’s and then away – stubborn silence.  
  
“What is it?” Dean bit out. “There’s always a price.”  
  
Neither of them answered for a long moment. Then Castiel sighed heavily. “It could fail,” he said. “And then not only do you die, but the wall still comes down. Purgatory opens up.”  
  
“Okay,” Dean said. “That’s a setback. “  
  
“And even if you do succeed, if the ritual works…”  
  
Dean prompted him with an expectant look.  
  
Sam cleared his throat. “The strain of the ritual could…maybe…shatter my soul into a few million pieces.”  
  
“Okay,” Dean said. “I think we’re done here.”  
  
“Dean – ”  
  
“It’s simple math, Sam,” Dean cut him off. “I’m not going to risk some sketchy ritual that could take us both down and bring on another apocalypse as a side dish. It’s not worth it.”  
  
“But – ”  
  
Dean pulled his lighter from his pocket, flicked it open, and lit the corner of the book on fire. It went up remarkably fast for such a solid thing, and he dropped it to the ground before it could burn his fingers.  
  
Sam was looking at him in disbelief. “You burned my book.”  
  
“Yeah, well words obviously weren’t getting through,” Dean said, stomping at the smoldering pages to keep the fire contained.  
  
“Why can’t you just – ”  
  
“Sam!” Dean snapped. “This is a waste of time. If you want to research something, research the damn stone. Because if we don’t find it here, we’re going to have to start all over again.”  
  
Sam was shaking his head, not looking at him. He had that lock-jawed expression that meant mutiny, but he pursed his lips and said. “Fine.”

  
*****

When they were teenagers, they used to race, back and forth down whatever stretch of deserted highway they were parked at that month. Most kids raced for the sheer fun of it, but there were always conditions attached for the Winchester boys.  
  
“Almost a second slower than last night,” John had said appraisingly. “What did you eat today?”  
  
And Dean had been forced to admit that he ate three bowls of cereal and nothing else, although he kept the sour gummi worms a secret. In truth, he had been slow that night because he’d been thinking of Chelsey Hart and her flared, plaid skirt, but he kept that a secret, too.  
  
“One second,” John had said. “That’s the swipe of a knife. In a fight, that could get you dead.”  
  
“Yes sir,” Dean had said, staring at the ground and thinking about Chelsey’s white hands playing with her hair.  
  
Sam joined him when he was old enough. Dean used to fret. How could Sammy possibly run from ghosts when he couldn’t even keep up with Dean?  
  
“That’s what we’re here for,” his father had. “So he doesn’t have to. Right?”  
  
And then Sam grew, and by the time Dean was eighteen, Sam was eating up the gravel beside him, long legs carrying him farther and faster than Dean could keep up with. He remembered Sam pulling ahead, sprinting past him to the designated telephone pole, tossing a triumphant grin over his shoulder while Dean yelled, “Cheater!”  
  
“How can you cheat at a race? It’s just running.”  
  
“Says the freak with ten-foot legs.”  
  
“You’re just jealous.”  
  
“Gigantic or not, I can still kick your ass.”  
  
Dean remembered the feeling of watching Sam pull away, relief and panic tearing at him in equal measure. Sam could out-run ghosts, which meant Sam would be safe. But if Sam was safe all on his own, then what good was Dean?  
  
In Purgatory, Dean had run, faster and farther than he ever thought he’d have to, but he never stopped. He should probably be grateful to his father for that. Or something.  
  
Sam laid out his sleeping roll too close to Dean. When he stretched out on it, Dean could feel him radiating heat, broad and solid.  
  
“If the stone is it,” Sam said quietly, “then we should stop wasting time.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“We only have a week and a half left. I don’t think we’re going to come up with any better plan than the one we have right now.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Sam asked.  
  
Because he had a headache, and Sam’s scrutiny was distracting, all sharp shadows and soft eyes in the darkness.  
  
“I’m tired,” he said. “Burning your stupid book wore me out.”  
  
Sam’s eyebrows looked amused. “Not my fault you’re a drama queen.”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean said, muffled into his pillow.  
  
Tomorrow, they’d go hunting. He didn’t know how they’d come to that agreement, but they somehow, silently, had.  
  
“Aren’t you nervous? It’s basically a suicide mission.”  
  
“No. I’m trying to block out this annoying voice that won’t let me sleep.”  
  
Sam pressed closer to him. Meg and Cas were across the room and were probably watching like the supernatural little voyeurs they were, but Dean didn’t much care.  
  
“You’re not fooling me,” he heard Sam say.  
  
Dean pretended to sleep, and when Sam hooked their ankles together, Dean let him.


	7. Chapter 7

  
**Chapter 7**

_Sunday_   


Sam was thirteen when Dean jerked him off for the first time. It had been a stupid thing, but Sam was so awkward and inept and desperate that Dean couldn’t help but tease him.  
  
They had a code about jerking off; it was done quickly and with no fuss and the other person shut their trap and pretended it wasn’t happening. But Dean had been drunk that night, stumbling home from some stupid high school party while their dad was away on a hunt, and he’d walked into their dingy little motel just in time to catch Sam in the act, erection tenting the sheets.  
  
And because he was drunk, Dean had stumbled over and dropped himself over Sam’s frozen body, grinning down and pushing Sam’s mop of hair back off his eyes.  
  
“Nice,” he had slurred. “Atta boy, Sammy.” And Sam had looked up at him, shocky and horny and enthralled in that way that only teenagers could be, and what had begun as a joke turned into something dangerous and permanent and disabling. Dean had put a hand on him, and Sam’s back had bowed violently, panting hotly into Dean’s neck. He jerked Sam off into the rumpled sheets, then kept him pinned while he finished himself.  
  
Other teenagers had girlfriends and makeout points and prom night. Sam and Dean only had each other to struggle through the rough years. Sam had learned when he was still a kid that the thing to do was not feel up a girl in the back of the movie theater but crawl under the sheets with his brother and brush their scabbed knees together. Even Dean knew it was fucked up, but the word  _incest_  never seemed to fit quite right. He was constantly, guiltily aware of what he had done to Sam, but he wasn’t in  _love_  with Sam. They jerked each other off out of necessity and isolation and, for Dean, out of the shuddery comfort of Sam’s tipped eyes and big hands and almost constant adolescent indignation. Sam and Dad were the only people in the world that could be trusted, and that meant body, mind, and soul.  
  
Sam put a stop to it when he turned fifteen and got a girlfriend, and Dean couldn’t begrudge him. Dean didn’t have girlfriends, only a series of random chicks, so it was easy to let Sam crowd him against the counter whenever they had to move on and Sam was once again without an outlet. Sam was skittish and lanky and almost always hostile during those years, and Dean never got over the way his face would go slack and his fingers would dig into Dean’s skin when he came.  
  
And then Sam went to Stanford and ripped away a layer of Dean like it had never been.

  
*****

Dean was up an hour before Sam, just as the sun was beginning to chase away the darkness. Sam still slept like a teenager at times, and his year and a half away from the life had softened him. He couldn’t go for days anymore, and when he crashed, he crashed good.  
  
Castiel had shown another bizarre bout of humanity by fluttering off somewhere and bringing them back donuts and coffee. Real coffee with cream, not just the instant stuff they kept in the glove compartment.  
  
“Meg tells me it’s what humans do on Sunday mornings,” Cas said.  
  
Dean shoved two powered donuts down his throat and saved the jelly-filled one for Sam. Sam would bitch, and Dean found he was actually sort of looking forward to that.  
  
He woke Sam up by waving the steaming cup under his nose. Sam moaned, long and wanting in his sleep, and Dean’s stomach clenched in a completely ill-timed burst of lust. Fucking Sam and his fucking hands and his deep fucking voice.  
  
“Up and at ‘em,” Dean said. “Big day.”  
  
Sam opened his eyes, and Dean read the way his emotions flipped from sleep to confusion to awareness to panic and then finally landed on resolve. Good.  
  
They packed the car and armed themselves, which took all of ten minutes. Dean stretched in the sun, feeling the way it warmed his skin. He’d never get enough sun, as long as he lived.  
  
“Dean,” Sam said behind him, and Dean turned. Sam had his hands shoved in his pockets, and he had that look on his face that said he was thirty seconds from giving one of his “Just in case we die today” speeches.  
  
“Don’t,” Dean said. “I see where this is going, and just – don’t.”  
  
“I didn’t even say anything,” Sam said, but there was a smile playing around the corner of his mouth.  
  
“You don’t have to,” Dean said. “You’re an open book, buddy.”  
  
“I guess,” Sam said. “But I don’t think you know what I was going to say.”  
  
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said. “I just wanted to tell you that we’re going to win today. That’s all.”

  
*****

They went at midmorning so the sun would provide some coverage. They left the Impala buried in the woods, as close as they could get without the rumbling engine giving them away. The nest was either very confident or had grown very complacent over the last two years, because there were no guards posted at any of the doors. The whole clearing was silent.  
  
It was going to be a bright, hot day. They had driven seventy miles to the nearest funeral home to stock up on dead man’s blood, and they each carried two full syringes and a coated knife. Sam had two guns and a serrated blade on him, and he’d seen Dean carefully strapping a machete to his thigh and holstering another at his back. Dean had even reluctantly given Meg one of the smaller hatchets. Sam and Dean both carried two grenades, hooked onto belt loops and waiting to be thrown. Only Cas was unarmed; Sam had seen him burn a vampire from the inside out.  
  
“I’ll do what I can,” Castiel said. “But I’m still weak. You’ll have to be quick, and very, very quiet.”  
  
The entire nest was fast asleep. With forty vampires, they could afford a night watch, but Sam figured they’d lived so long without challenge that they’d ditched the precaution. It was what he and Dean were counting on.  
  
The door creaked the tiniest bit when they opened it, but the nearest sleeping vampire was halfway across the warehouse, and it didn’t even stir. There were at least a dozen of them on the first floor, strewn out across the open space in various states of undress. Some were pressed together – mates, Sam assumed. Others were curled up on beds of dried grass or even fluffed piles of cotton that looked like it had been ripped from a mattress. Sam counted two dead bodies. The girl from several nights ago had been discarded in the corner, slumped over with dead, staring eyes, and the other was barely a body anymore. Its flesh had been nearly ripped from the bones, leaving a mangled mash of graying tissue and white skin.  
  
He ached to use the machete in his hand, but that’s not what they were there for. He forced his eyes away from the bodies and kept moving. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Dean pull his gaze away from the dead girl and follow suit. Sam located the stairs and nodded his head. As planned, he and Dean slid their way silently to the second floor, while Meg and Castiel stayed to search the bottom level.  
  
The upper level was more complicated; instead of one open space, it had a central hallway and six rooms lining each side. Dean hitched his head to left – a silent order.  
  
They picked their way through their respective sides of the hallway, soundlessly casing the rooms. Sam noted thick curtains draping every window, so no light filtered in. Flashlights were out of the question.  
  
He looked for closets, secret wall compartments, locked boxes with weird symbols – anything. There were three to five vampires per room, every one of them sprawled on the floor. Sam gave them a wide berth and had to hope none of them were hiding the stone under their makeshift mattresses. He couldn’t hear Dean on the other side of the hallway, but he could feel his presence. They were moving down the rooms at roughly the same pace.  
  
Sam stopped when he entered the third room, because there it was, plain as day. One of four vampires was curled on his side, clutching a wooden box like its life depended on it. It was roughly shoe-box sized and sealed shut with a brass padlock. Sam’s eyes went to it with laser focus.  
  
He took a deep breath and began to ease the object away, praying for luck and silence and possibly a miracle. The vampire’s hands clutched on the box, and he started to pull it back unconsciously. Sam’s foot slipped from his crouch, and he accidentally jabbed the vampire in the side.  
  
Fuck. So much for luck.  
  
Clear brown eyes snapped open, but Sam was already moving. A blood-soaked rag stuffed down the creature’s throat, a syringe in the softest part of his neck. The vampire relaxed back, eyes dizzy and agonized, and the box slipped out of his hands. Sam grabbed it, then hauled up the vampire in his other arm, dragging it out of the room. The struggle it put up was weak at best – the dead man’s blood left him almost paralyzed. The other vampires slept on, and Sam pulled the door closed behind him without a sound.  
  
Dean met him in the hallway, and they worked with the perfunctory ease of an assembly line. They couldn’t seem to make it an hour without arguing, but they’d always been able to fight perfectly in sync. John had trained them well. Sam shoved the vampire to the ground, one hand in its hair to stretch out its neck, one foot on its back, holding it on hands and knees. Dean swung the machete, and the flesh separated into two clean hunks.  
  
Sam let the thing crumple in its own blood, then held out the box to Dean. Dean’s eyes lit on it, then met his. One jam of the machete’s handle, and the lock broke. Dean tipped up the lid and…  
  
Cash. There was nothing but stacks of cash inside. The dead vampire had been the damn treasurer.  
  
Dean shot him an impatient look, and Sam mouthed “sorry.” They pocketed as much of the cash as they could fit, then moved on.  
  
Three more rooms to search. The first and second turned up nothing. Sam had blood on his clothes, now, and the vampires were starting to shift when he walked into the rooms, smelling it even in their sleep. They were running out of time.  
  
The last room raised the hairs on the back of his neck. First, there were only two vampires in the whole place. The other rooms had been packed like sardines. Second, there was an actual bed and side table. The curtains over the windows were a dark, rich velvet , not the ragged cloth of the other bedrooms.  
  
The couple on the bed slept like lovers, wrapped around each other. The guy was dark and lean with a widow’s peak, and the woman had blonde hair that was more butter than gold. Jeffries had described these two as the leaders. If the stone were here, it would be with them.  
  
Sam checked the bedside table first. Nothing. He felt around the edge of the mattress, looking for a sewn-up tear that said the mattress had been ripped open at some juncture. The walls were as flimsy and rough as the rest of the warehouse, but Sam walked the perimeter anyway, feeling for anything that might be a hidden compartment.  
  
Nothing.  
  
He turned in a circle, frustrated, when something glinted in the corner of his eye. The woman’s piled over her shoulder, but beneath its thin curtain, Sam could see a golden chain. A jagged stone hung at the end of it, pillowed against the white mattress.  
  
Sam stared for a minute, caught. The stone was a dull gray, oblong and cloudy, and something seemed to shift in the middle of it when Sam looked. It was just a thing, laying perfectly still, but its insides looked alive and threatening. He didn’t want to touch it, and that alone told him that it was the stone he’d been looking for. He’d have to be quick. He lifted the stone between two fingers, ready to jerk the chain free.  
  
A hand caught his wrist, and when he looked, the vampire’s eyes were open, cold blue in the darkness. Sam tried to yank the necklace free, but she flung him off with barely a flick of her wrist. He hit the wall and slid down, winded.  
  
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said, long legs swinging out of bed.  
  
Sam let her get close enough, and then he reached for his second syringe, aiming for her neck. She deflected it, lightning-quick, but the needle glanced off her arm and drew blood. She jerked back, hissing, and Sam saw his chance. He grabbed wildly for the swinging stone, and somehow he caught it. Her mate was up now, staring at them fighting with deadly intent, and Sam could hear movement in the rooms behind him.  
  
Sam pulled and he felt the chain snap free. He caught her with a punch across the jaw that probably hurt his knuckles more than it hurt her, and then he was scrambling for the door. He tossed one of the grenades behind him, and the explosion knocked him flat on his face.  
  
“Dean!” he bellowed through the dust. “Come on!”  
  
Dean was already in the hallway, hacking his way through two very confused vampires. Sam sprinted for the stairs at the far end, hearing footsteps pound behind him. He had to hope they were Dean’s and not the woman’s.  
  
They’d kicked the nest awake, and Sam had to dodge another vampire as he headed for the stairs. He looked back frantically, waiting for Dean to break free so he could launch his second explosive. His shoe slipped in something sticky and red, and he stumbled, only to be caught up by a hand around his neck.  
  
It was her, blue eyes blazing. She lifted him against the wall, cutting off his air until he was writhing, hands pulling at her wrists. “I don’t care who you are,” she said. “Walking into this place is suicide.”  
  
Sam couldn’t answer. He thought he caught a flash of white light and heard Meg’s voice from below. A slim hand reached down into his pocket, fishing for the stone. Sam kicked uselessly. She was way too strong, and his throat was going to collapse under her fingers. Everything started to white out, the whole scene going fuzzy around the edges. She was still speaking, and Sam could smell the blood on her breath. Her fangs had come down and were inches from him, stretching…  
  
And then the vice around his throat disappeared, and Dean was there, savage and blood-lit beyond the flash of the machete.  
  
The vampire’s head hit the floorboards and rolled crazily, cheek over cheek, until it stopped to rest against the wall. Sam slid to the ground, pulling at his neck and trying to breathe deeply enough to clear the careening stars from his vision. He felt the second grenade snagged from his belt loop, and then a faraway explosion as it hit its mark. Sam sagged against the wall and breathed.  
  
“Hey, look at me. You good? Sam.” Dean’s hands were on his face, tipping his head to check for lumps, pressing two fingers against his neck to search for his pulse.  
  
The familiarity of it was comforting, and Sam let Dean cup both his cheeks before he put a hand on Dean’s wrist and hoarsely said, “I’m fine.”  
  
“Jesus,” Dean breathed, pulling him to his feet. Sam’s vision went dotted from pain. The hallway beyond had lost its shape. Sunlight was pouring in from the hole one of the grenades had punched in the wall. The roof was coming down, and the floor was starting to sag. Dust swirled in the sunlight, drifting past the blood-splashed walls. Sam’s swimming vision caught hold of an arm, a shoe, a chunk of scalp. Dean’s face was black with blood, his hands coated in it.  
  
“Come on, we gotta go,” Dean said. “This whole place is coming down.” Below them, the roar of fighting continued. He pulled at Sam’s arm, and Sam held fast.  
  
“I got it,” Sam said. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the stone. “Dean, I got it.”  
  
Dean blinked him, then looked down at the stone. Sam watched his mouth part the slightest bit. He started to reach for it, then drew his hand back instead and rubbed at the blood crusting on his face. Sam took his hand and lowered the amulet into it, golden chain and hazy stone piling into his palm. Dean stared, and Sam could see him registering the same wrongness of the thing that he himself had felt. It slithered inside itself.  
  
“Dean,” he said, light and joyful, unable to stop the smile pulling at him. “We did it. I can’t believe it, we – “  
  
Dean stared for another few seconds, then shook himself out of it and slid the stone into his own pocket. “Right,” he said, “look at the pretty necklace later. Let’s get out of here.” He started moving forward the through the gloom, and Sam put a hand on his shoulder, bone-crushing hope and relief bursting out of him.  
  
“We really got it,” Sam said again. “It’s gonna be okay.”  
  
Dean turned back, and Sam knew he was fighting the same elation with all his might, because he was Dean and he would never believe that anything good could happen without coming coated in his own sacrifice.  
  
“It’s gonna be fine,” Sam said, choked up. “You’re not going back to Purgatory. I’ve got it, we can do the ritual, we can – “  
  
Dean’s face changed, and it took an instant too long for Sam to recognize the shift. Dean’s mouth twisted in warning, his eyes opening wide.  
  
Sam heard, “Sam look out!” before something slammed into his skull, and everything went dark.


	8. Chapter 8

  
**Chapter 8**

_Sunday_   


  
Sam woke to someone lightly slapping his cheeks. He jerked away, but he didn’t get far. His hands and legs were bound to a chair, and the back of his skull felt wet and split open.  _Butt of a gun_ , he thought. It had happened to him enough times for him to recognize the feeling.  
  
The worst thing, though, was the tongue lapping slowly at his neck, licking its way around a burning slash of pain.  
  
Shit, they’d already started feeding on him. He could feel it in his limbs now, in the heaviness of his head. They’d fed. Maybe a lot.  
  
“Rise and shine.” The slap to his face came again, and Sam opened his eyes with effort.  
  
“Sam Winchester,” the voice said. “I was afraid we’d killed you already.”  
  
When his eyes could focus, Sam recognized the vampire. It was the mate of the blue-eyed female that Dean had decapitated. Under his widow’s peak he had cheekbones cut like glass. His eyes were dark as pitch, staring at Sam with burning hatred.  
  
“Guess I’m lucky,” Sam rasped. His whole throat felt dry and cracked, and he was chilled to the center of his bones. He could feel the wetness of blood on his neck.  
  
The vampire tipped Sam’s head back and leaned down again, tongue lapping. Sam made a little moan of pain without meaning to. He was shivering in the dank heat of the warehouse.  
  
The vampire pulled away, licking the blood from his lips, and Sam saw his teeth, sharp and fierce. He dropped Sam’s head, and Sam managed to keep his face up, barely.  
  
He wandered away for a few minutes, and Sam saw that there were others, standing back in the shadows. Waiting. He didn’t see Dean anywhere, and he didn’t know whether to pay attention his relief at the thought that Dean had escaped, or the underlying fear that he was alone. Abandoned, outmatched.  
  
Relief would keep his head clearer, he decided, so he focused on that.  
  
He let his gaze wander upward. The back half of the warehouse was caved in, floor collapsed under the force of the explosives he and Dean had set off. The haphazard fall of shingles and planking let in long shoots of sunlight; all the vamps were crowded toward the front end to avoid it. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out more of them, blending in with the wall or sleeping off the daylight in clusters of three and four.  
  
Sam counted silently. Twenty-four. That meant he and Dean had blown almost twenty of them to bits. The thought was viciously satisfying.  
  
The vampire came back, flanked by two others and holding a long, jagged knife. Sam tensed as one of them hankered down and made a long cut along Sam’s forearm. He stared straight ahead and refused to flinch when the vamp bent down and started drinking from the seeping cut. He was already losing feeling in his fingertips. If they kept it up, he’d be dead in a few hours.  
  
“I don’t know whether to turn you or kill you,” his torturer said, tapping the blood-tipped knife against his palm. “You killed my mate. Eye for an eye, and all that. Then again, it might be more fun to watch your hunter brother cut your head off.”  
  
“Dean’s long gone,” Sam said, allowing himself a nasty smile. “So whatever you’re gonna do, spare me the monologue.”  
  
“Actually,” the vampire sank down again, very close to Sam’s face. His breath smelled of blood and dirt, rotten and decaying. “He’s tied up under those stairs over there. He was screaming for you so loud, we had to knock him out.”  
  
Sam’s blood froze. No. No, Dean had seen the thing coming for Sam. He’d tried to warn Sam. He would have had time to get away.  
  
“We could bleed him in front of you,” the vampire whispered. “We could kill him nice and slow. Or you could tell us where you put the stone, and we can let you both go.”  
  
Sam jerked involuntarily, anger making him surge against his restraints. The vampire backhanded him, and everything went gray for a second. The cut on his arm was stinging, and his hands were strangely numb.  
  
“Don’t have it,” he mumbled, and he realized he was talking to his own chest. His head was too heavy to keep up anymore. He started laughing, and the vampire jerked his head up again, fingers twisted in Sam’s hair.  
  
“Don’t have it,” Sam said again. Dean had had the thing in his pocket. And if the vampires were looking for it, that meant Dean had escaped. “You stupid fuckers, you’ll never get it back from him."  
  
Something snapped in the vampire’s dark eyes. Either he realized he’d been caught in his lie, or Sam had just pushed him far enough to earn himself a few more hours of torture.  
  
Sam didn’t have time to brace himself before a heavy boot landed square in his chest. The chair went over backwards, and Sam’s head slammed against the ground. Blackness, stars, and he couldn’t breathe through his wrecked rib cage.  
  
The chair had splintered under him, but it didn’t matter. Sam couldn’t move his limbs anyway. He was too dizzy, had lost too much blood. The vampire put a foot on Sam’s throat, pinning him.  
  
“I know who you are,” he said. “I knew, even before I tasted the demon in you. You Winchesters don’t exactly keep a low profile.” The knife glinted in the watery light, jagged and dangerous.  
  
“Your brother will trade for you. And when he shows his face again, I’ll kill you both.”

  
*****

  
“They have him,” Dean raged. “They fucking have Sam.”  
  
Castiel stood motionless, mouth pulled tight. His eyes were haunted. Meg slouched in a chair, examining her fingernails.  
  
Dean slammed his fist into the wall, and one of his knuckles dislocated with a satisfying spike of pain. Fuck, Sam had gone down like a felled tree. He’d stood there, shocked and useless, until Castiel had appeared with Meg, whisking all three of them back to safety and leaving Sam in the middle of those parasites.  
  
He’d shoved Castiel the second he got his feet under him, fisted a hand in his collar and demanded to be sent back  _now, right now, I will smite you ten ways from Sunday, you sonofabith._  
  
But Castiel refused.  
  
“Even if I had the strength, I wouldn’t. If we go in like this, you’re signing both your death warrants,” he’d said, and if there was an apology in his voice, Dean had refused to acknowledge it.  
  
Meg had watched the whole thing with a smirk playing around her mouth, and if she didn’t look so much like a girl, Dean would have punched her, too.  
  
“ _Think_ , Dean-o,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “They want the stone. They’re not going to touch little Sammy until they know they can get it.”  
  
They weren’t going to  _kill_  Sam, Dean amended in his head. They could torture and feed all they wanted.  
  
“So that’s it,” Dean said. “We trade the stone for Sam.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s wise,” Castiel said, at the same time that Meg said, “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”  
  
“Dean,” Castiel said, stepping closer. “They could have turned him already.”  
  
“Then we turn him back,” Dean snapped, and the room fell silent.  
  
“You’re really a piece of work,” Meg said finally. “You’re going to trade the only known way of controlling the Leviathans for _Sam_ , who didn’t even have the brains to keep himself from getting captured.”  
  
“I got no problem sending you straight back to hell, bitch,” Dean said.  
  
“Dean,” Castiel said quietly, and Dean viciously jammed his knife into the soft pine of the wall.  
  
“I’m the one on the chopping block,” Dean said, “ so I’m calling the shots here. And I say trade.”

  
*****

  
They waited until full daylight on Castiel’s insistence. Dean paced, an inch from crawling out of his skin.  
  
There were three vampires at both remaining entrances to the warehouse, skulking in the shadows of the doorways. They had had the gall to drive Impala back to the warehouse and park her on the grass, shining in the sun like the world’s most perfect booby trap. When he got Sam back, Dean vowed to himself, he was going to slaughter every one of them.  
  
It was the middle of the day, but the sun was a scant advantage when they were so badly outnumbered. They had less than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting both Sam and the stone out safely, but Dean figured that was just about normal for them. He waited while he gave Meg and Cas time to get to their own positions, one per entrance.  
  
Dad had put him and Sam through concentration drills when they were teenagers. Ten seconds to survey and obstacle course, and then a tight blindfold. Dean remembered stumbling around a barren field in the darkness, and his father saying, “Boom. You just stepped on dynamite.”  
  
By the time Dean was twenty, he was a master at it. He could go blind and still kick more supernatural ass than most other hunters. It was about the focus, about making your mind go blank, so that everything else sharpened. The snap of a tree branch, the hitch of a breath. These were the tiny details that mattered in combat. It had saved his life more than once, that ability to make his mind go perfectly, coldly blank.  
  
It never seemed to work when Sam was involved. When he needed clarity the most, his brain turned against him. He couldn’t stop seeing Sam, bloody and unconscious, screaming in pain. How much had they fed from him? Had they turned him? They could have made him drink blood, screwed him for eternity, screwed Dean over in the process because Dean thought he’d drive his car into a tree before he’d be able to cut Sam down like a monster.  
  
His hands were shaking. He counted to thirty, and decided he’d given Meg and Cas enough time  
  
He stepped out from the thicket of trees, and all three vampires turned, eyes glinting dully in the shadows. Dean dangled the gold chain from two fingers, turning it a little to let the sun catch it.  
  
“I’m guessing you want this back,” he said, and then he bolted.  
  
He had spent enough time running from vampires in Purgatory to know how pathetically outmatched he was. He stuck to the patches of sun, hoping it would slow his pursuers down long enough for Meg and Cas to get to Sam. They both had a better chance of fighting their way through a nest of vamps than Dean did, as much as it killed him to admit it.  
  
He stowed the stone without stopping. He had two syringes of dead man’s blood in his pocket and a machete strapped to this thigh, although he doubted he’d get the chance to use it. They gained on him in seconds. He was barely a hundred feet past the tree line before the first one was on him, slamming him to the ground in a blinding tackle.  
  
Dean was ready. He twisted as he fell, jamming the first syringe into the vamp’s neck. His grip on Dean eased in seconds as the poison took over. He slumped uselessly, and Dean reached for the machete.  
  
He never made it. The second vampire stepped on his arm and ground down, and Dean felt the bones in his wrist snap. His vision went red with pain. He couldn’t do a thing to stop it when the vampire wrenched his head off the ground by the collar of his shirt and punched him across the face. Three more punches followed, and through swimming pain, Dean caught a glance of blood-specked fangs. His head slammed against the ground, hot and numb. He couldn’t tell if the side of his face was still intact, or if they’d beaten it to bone.  
  
Two minutes, he thought. Maybe three. Not a lot of time, but enough.  
  
Dean felt cold hands frisking him, looking for the stone. “Not gonna by me dinner first?” he tried to say, but his tongue wasn’t moving properly. His second syringe was discarded, machete kicked away.  
  
“Where is it?” the handsy vampire growled in his face. He had muddy brown eyes and a layer of stubble, and Dean wished he had a knife to jam through his throat.  
  
“Sam,” Dean managed thickly. “I’m not saying a damn thing until I see my brother.”  
  
They hauled him up and marched him back the way they’d come, shoving him forward when he stumbled. The first vamp who’d attacked him was draped over his friend’s shoulder, and all three of them were starting to smell faintly singed in the sun. Dean took some grim satisfaction in that.  
  
“You should put some aloe on that,” he told one of them, nodded at the place where his pale skin was starting to blister. Pity his voice was still all deformed, because it was pretty clever.  
  
They shoved him through the door of the warehouse, and in the dusty gloom he could see the leader walking toward him, broad and dangerous.  
  
…and then crumpling, as Castiel put a hand on him from behind. He fell like his spine had been cut, heavy and boneless. Dean heard a whistling and a wet thunk, and then the head of the vampire holding him fell forward like a cherry popping its stem. The silver blade followed, finishing its deadly swing.  
  
Dean stumbled a little without the hands holding him up, but Meg caught him with a none-too-gentle grip on his bicep.  
  
“Pass out and I’ll kill you,” she gritted, and Dean didn’t think he’d ever wanted to decapitate her less.  
  
There was one vampire left, but he looked nervously from Castiel to Meg, debating his chances. He’d dropped his buddy on the ground, and now he backed toward the wall. Dean could hear commotion from what was left of the loft. Castiel was bent toward the ground, and Dean saw that he was pulling a slumped figure from the shadows, slinging a long arm over his shoulder.  
  
Sam.  
  
He started toward Cas, but Meg tightened her grip. “No time,” she said, eyes deeply black. She was right. One vampire had vaulted over the railing and was heading for them, and more would follow.  
  
Meg was breathing heavily, and Castiel looked like he had aged years, drained and struggling under Sam’s weight. Dean’s broken wrist was useless and bent at his side, beginning to purple. They were all out of juice; they had no hope of clearing out the nest.  
  
“The stone?” Meg asked.  
  
“Safe,” Dean said. “Let’s go.” He motioned, and Castiel and Meg followed, tailing him out to the car. The keys were hanging in the ignition, glinting in the sun, and Dean thanked every god who had screwed him in the last five years for that small favor. They pealed out toward the dirt road, kicking up dust in their wake.

  
*****

  
They drove in silence, Meg watching the rearview mirror with sharp, flickering eyes. Sam slumped in the back seat, head crammed against the door, dried blood smearing his neck from clavicle to chin. He was waxy pale and very still. Bruises mottled the left side of his face, and his lips were faintly blue. His arms were slashed in criss-crossing cuts.  
  
“He’s – ” Dean started through the lump in his throat.  
  
“He’s still alive,” Castiel said tiredly. “Although I’m not sure how. They took enough blood to kill him.”  
  
Dean switched his gaze to Castiel, and for the first time he saw the streaks of blood on Cas’s own face, the way his lip was split and scabbing. For Cas to be bleeding, he had to be in bad shape. His head leaned against the window, eyes closed. Dean swallowed and kept driving.  
  
“What did you do with it?” Meg demanded, and Dean speared her a glance. He’d refused to tell her or Castiel his plan. If he died, Dean figured that meant Sam was dead, too, and if they were both dead then Dean didn’t give a shit what happened to the damn stone.  
  
“It’s safe,” he said. “We’ll have to go back for it later.”  
  
Meg muttered something less than complimentary under her breath.  
  
“They’re going to track us down,” Castiel said, low and gravelly. “They’ll wait until the sun sets, and then they’ll start hunting. It would be in our best interest to be far away by then.”  
  
Sam needed a doctor, Dean realized. Probably a transfusion. Except hospitals were scarce in bumfuck Arkansas, and that was the first place the vampires would look. The nearest hunter-friendly doctor was two days’ drive, and he and Sam were pretty much blacklisted anyway. No one wanted the Winchester luck to rub off on them.  
  
And then there was his wrist. He’d usually trust Sam to set it or Castiel to heal it, but those were out of the question at the moment. He was going to have to splint it himself, but he needed time and supplies to do it.  
  
They drove until the needle hit empty, and then they pulled into the nearest gas station. Dean cleaned himself up in the bathroom, scrubbing the blood from his face, gingerly touching where his eye had swelled shut. He tried to force the panic down, deliberately not thinking of Sam in the backseat. He was still breathing, Dean told himself. He’d keep breathing. He’d survived the devil himself; no way a two-bit bloodsucker was taking him down.  
  
He managed to change using only one hand, but every time his wrist brushed something unintentionally, pain shot from fingertips to shoulder. It was starting to look really bad now, puffed up to twice its size, coloring his hand a jaundiced yellow. His left arm was basically paralyzed.  
  
He crawled into the backseat while Meg and Castiel were making themselves less bloody. Sam was breathing slowly and deeply, and Dean put a hand on his throat to feel his pulse. His skin was cool and his lips were gray, but his heartbeat tapped rhythmically against Dean’s palm. He’d be okay. He’d be okay. They’d gotten there in time. They hadn’t, Dean hadn’t…  
  
He stopped that train of thought.  
  
“Sam,” he said in the silence of the car. He swallowed. “Sammy, I’m sorry. This is my fault. But you’re not gonna die like this, I promise.” He touched Sam’s hair, the hollow at the base of his neck. He held himself very still and tried to think about the way his dad had tested him when he was younger. Give him a dire situation and then ask, “What next, son? Your partner’s dead, you have one knife, and the enemy can smell your blood. What next?”  
  
By the time Meg returned, Dean was leaning against the driver’s window, skimming through Dad’s journal. “Shelter,” he muttered. “We need a safe house.”  
  
“We need to get back to that stone before the vamps do, and your brother needs a hospital before he kicks the bucket,” Meg said, sliding too close next to him. The smell of sulfur clung to her, made stronger by the blood and violence of the last hours. He turned his face away.  
  
“Sam’s fine,” Dean said curtly. “We’ll all be fine if we get some rest. The stone is safe.”  
  
“I don’t know.” Meg glanced over her shoulder at Castiel, who was walking heavily towards them. “Your angel boyfriend doesn’t look so hot.”  
  
He didn’t. His face was paler than usual, translucent and shiny with sweat. Dean wondered just how far he’d pushed himself back at the warehouse. Even in Purgatory, Castiel had never looked like this – so weak and tired.  
  
“My dad had a safe house a couple hundred miles outside Tulsa. We can lay low there until we figure out a next step.”  
  
They stuck to back roads, looping around cities and avoiding tolls. The sun was almost gone by the time the safe house came into view, imposing and shadowy in the twilight. Dean had been to this location once, when he was twenty-two and Sam was sitting somewhere in a freshman lecture hall. His dad had taken a bullet in the shoulder and was losing too much blood to keep going. They’d stopped for a whole day, and Dean had sewn his father back together with alcohol, dental thread, and tweezers. The bullet was probably still buried out back, ash covering it to hide the scent.  
  
Dean remembered his father passing out mid-surgery, the way his own heart had stopped for a second, thinking –  _no Sam, Dad dead, Impala miles away, and alone, alone, alone._  
  
His father had clapped him on the back when he woke, one of those strong, open palms that meant approval. Dean had carried that with him for a long time. Years.  
  
The place was two stories of rotting shingles and wood paneling. There was no electricity or running water, but there was a stream out back that was fresh and clear, and there were enough candles stashed in a drawer that Dean could see his way around.  
  
The first floor held a couch, and Dean dumped Sam there, taking a second to work the kinks from his neck and shoulders before he arranged his brother properly. They’d all stopped talking hours ago, too exhausted to do anything except grunt.  
  
He’d been fighting a headache since Tulsa, but it was getting more and more difficult to ignore. Another vision was coming for him, and it was only a matter of time before he’d have to give in.  
  
Meg looked up from the kitchen table when he wandered back in, satisfied that Sam was comfortable for the moment.  
  
“So what’s the plan, fearless leader?” she asked.  
  
Dean didn’t have the energy for more than a middle finger in her direction. “Cas, how long before you can zap us back to pick up the stone?” He slid his hand along the inside of one of the barren kitchen cabinets until he found it. Bottle of whiskey, taped to the inside in case of emergency. Dean murmured his thanks before wrenching it free.  
  
“I don’t know,” Castiel admitted. “I’m weaker than I should be. I think it’s you, Dean.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“You’re not really human right now. Not all the way human. You’re dragging around pieces of Purgatory with you, and I can feel them. Between that and the vampires, it could be days before I can go anywhere again.”  
  
“Great,” Dean said, and drank. The burn washed through him, distracting him from the throb in his wrist for a brief moment.  
  
“Fine,” Dean said. “If you can’t fly, then you can at least make yourself useful. I need you to set my wrist.” Castiel stared at him morosely. “You, too,” he said to Meg. “First aid kit is in the bathroom. Bring the whole box, and a couple towels.”  
  
She rolled her eyes, but she went.  
  
Castiel was hanging his head. Sulking, Dean imagined. He really didn’t look so hot.  
  
“So, it’s me, huh?” he said after a minute. Castiel clenched his jaw and nodded.  
  
“Could have said something,” Dean said. “I can find you somewhere else to re-juice, if it will help.”  
  
Castiel met his eyes, finally. “With Sam like he is, you need my help.”  
  
Dean couldn’t argue with that. Castiel’s trench coat was covered in blood, vampire and angel, and Dean straddled one of the rickety chairs to scratch at it.  
  
“What are you doing?” Castiel asked warily, and Dean lifted his shoulders half-heartedly. “You can’t wear that thing around if it makes you look like a murder victim.”  
  
Castiel let Dean pull it off him, collar first. He balled it up and tossed it into the non-working sink. As soon as his wrist was set, as soon as he slept, he’d take Castiel out to the stream and teach him about taking care of clothes. It sounded pretty lame inside his head, but some pieces of clothing were too awesome to ruin. Like leather jackets and decades-old jeans and weirdly flattering trench coats.  
  
Without the coat, Castiel looked even smaller, pale and slouched in his white shirt and tie. “We should get you boots,” Dean said. “Manly ones.”  
  
Castiel was looking at him like he was insane, and maybe he was. His head pounded behind his eyes, and he had a feeling setting the wrist was going to hurt enough to knock him off his feet. If that demon bitch would just hurry up and get back with…  
  
He stopped. It was too quiet. She’d been gone minutes, when it should have taken her thirty seconds.  
  
He shoved to his feet at a run, then skidded to a stop in the ratty living room. Meg was staring down silently at Sam, hand on his face in a strangely martial grip.  
  
“What the hell?” Dean said. She looked up at him, eyes clear and calm.  
  
“I’m getting fed up with this Winchester bullshit,” she said. “Tell me where the stone is, or I snap Sam’s neck.”  
  
Dean reached for his gun out of habit, knowing it would be useless. It wouldn’t stop her, and he’d never get to her with Ruby’s knife before she killed Sam.  
  
“What are you doing?” Castiel breathed behind him, and Dean heard the confusion in his voice.  
  
“Sorry, Cas,” Meg said, and her smile was tight. “You should’ve listened to Deano, here. Once Crowley gets a hold of someone, he doesn’t let them go.”  
  
“You don’t have to do this,” Dean said. He let his arms fall harmlessly, palms open at his pockets. “We’ll protect you from Crowley.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Cas said. His blue eyes were strangely dark, uncomprehending. Caught off-guard by betrayal in a way that Dean could remember. “I thought you wanted revenge.”  
  
“What she wants is to get off the torture train, and I’m the only one that can make that happen.” Crowley’s voice came from behind them, low and smug, and Dean turned.  
  
The king of Hell was standing there, hands in the lapel of his black suit. He wore a smirk to match his words, and for a moment, Dean could only stare.  
  
“Close your mouth, “ Crowley said. “You’ll catch flies.”  
  
“I can’t believe this,” Dean said. “This is fucking unbelievable.” He should have known, because any situation that ended with both Dean and Sam safe and alive had to be a trap.  
  
“Believe it, love,” Crowley said. “Now, tell me where the stone is, or the nice demon snaps your brother’s neck.”  
  
Dean’s jaw was aching from clenching it so tightly. “How do I know you won’t kill him anyway?”  
  
Crowley shrugged. “You don’t. But you don’t have a choice, do you? Your brother is helpless as a newborn, and your angel is out of commission. Besides.” He smiled widely. “You know me and deals. I always give my word.”  
  
Dean shook his head, words wrenching out of him. “I dropped it inside a rotted tree stump thirty yards from the warehouse. It’s covered in vamp repellent, so it should still be there.” Dean had rubbed the stone in ash made from saffron, skunk’s cabbage, and trillium. He’d smeared the rest around the base of the tree.  
  
“Resourceful,” Crowley remarked, then disappeared. Dean watched Meg for endless seconds, a tense standoff. Ten plans ran through his head, every one more suicidal than the last. He discarded them all, and then Crowley was back, necklace wrapped in his thick fingers. Dean watched it glint, the last of his hope sinking in his gut.  
  
“Ugly thing,” Crowley marveled. He snapped his fingers, and Meg dropped Sam’s face.  
  
Crowley took ahold of her arm, and Dean could see the way she shrank back, pulling. “Next time you see me, you better run, bitch,” Dean said. Meg’s mouth twisted.  
  
Crowley smirked. “It’s been entertaining as always, boys. Ta.” Dean blinked and he was gone, Meg and the stone vanished into thin air.


	9. Week Three; Chapter 9

  
**Week Three**

**Chapter 9**

_Tuesday_   


  
Sam’s nightmares were of Hell.  
  
Dean and Dad had never talked about death when Sam was growing up. The threat of it hung over their family, more tangible than any eight-year-old should have to deal with. But Dad was a superhero, according to Dean. Dad would never die, and as long as nothing happened to Dad, nothing would happen to them.  
  
Once, Sam told his guidance counselor that his dad was dying of cancer. Dean had wacked him upside the head for it when the woman called their home, offering condolences and counseling services.  
  
 _What the hell did you do that for?_  Dean had yelled at him.  _Are you trying to get CPS on our asses?_  
  
 _It’s not like it’s a lie_ , Sam had shouted back.  _Dad could die any day._  
  
Dean had called him a brat and given him a bloody nose. Then he’d gone out and bought them microwave popcorn and a gigantic tub of candy from the corner store. An apology, and a bribe so Sam would keep quiet about it when Dad got home.  
  
The truth was, it wasn’t Dad’s death that he had nightmares about.  
  
They avoided words like  _dead_ , or  _dying_ , or  _deceased_ , or  _fatal_. A hunter killed in the line was a fallen soldier. A warning to Sam and Dean was,  _if I don’t make it back_ , or  _if you don’t hear from me by morning_. Never  _if I die_. Never  _if it kills me_.  
  
Pain, though. Pain was Tuesday night dinner conversation in the Winchester household. Techniques to withstand torture. Suturing lessons. How to tell the difference between a concussion and nasty bump on the head.  
  
Sam had never even so much as asked his dad about an afterlife when he turned twelve, but he could clean a wound and stitch a gash and set a broken finger with the ease of an Army medic. He thought he knew pain.  
  
His time in the hole with Lucifer had blown all of his perceptions to bloody bits.  
  
Standard techniques for surviving torture didn’t matter when your torturer had control over your mind as well as your body. Physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain – it was a three-pronged pitchfork of agony, all striking at once. Lucifer liked to wear Dean’s face when he tortured Sam. Sometimes Dad’s, sometimes Jess’s, but mostly Dean’s. Dean called him  _freak_  and _monster_  and  _worthless_  while he carved into Sam’s skin, hunter’s eyes cold and pitiless. Sam forgot that it was fake, forgot where he was, until Lucifer yanked him out of it just to start over again.  
  
Sometimes Lucifer just made him watch Dean die, over and over again. The mystery spot, but worse, longer, bloodier.  
  
It would have been so much easier if it were just knives and fire.  
  
Sam could tell he was dreaming now. He couldn’t seem to stay conscious, but Dean was there whenever he dragged his eyes open briefly. Dean was still alive, which meant that Sam hadn’t missed it, hadn’t slept through it. He hadn’t failed again, not yet.  
  
Sometimes he heard Dean’s voice, and he caught snatches of apologies and explanations that felt  _important_ , but that he couldn’t seem to hold on to.  
  
“I lost it, man, it’s gone,” was the one thing that seemed to stick in his brain, Dean’s words shot through with exhaustion and worry and the self-loathing that Sam dreaded. “I’m sorry, Sammy, it’s gone.”  
  
It wasn’t until later, when Sam was conscious, that he finally put the pieces together.

  
*****

  
Sam slept for two days. Castiel kept saying  _hospital_ , but Dean had seen this before. He’d watched Sam sleep off the effects of torture and blood loss more than once. He’d wake up on his own.  
  
Castiel was all but useless. Dean walked him through the process of setting a broken wrist, but it wasn’t a clean break. The vampire had ground the tiny bones until they snapped, all pointed the wrong way under his flesh. Dean had opened the skin and cleaned it himself, and passed out twice face down on the kitchen table for his efforts.  
  
When it was finally drained and cleaned, he’d shown Cas how to fake a cast from slivered firewood, gauze, and medical tape. It held, but it hurt like a bitch. Dean was pretty sure he’d still be able to fire a gun with his left hand once it healed, but it would never be the same. It would always shake, always be slow, always be tight and clumsy in a fight.  
  
Not that he had many more punches left in him. Purgatory wasn’t exactly a bar fight kind of scene.  
  
There was a gas stove and a year’s worth of canned goods in the cool basement, and Dean made himself eat. He made Sam swallow a little water every few hours, propping him up and pouring the stuff down his throat until he coughed and sputtered, body jerking. He had to do it, but touching Sam made him shake with failure and fury, apologies that he couldn’t get past his lips.  
  
After a few times Cas took over, transparent pity in his eyes.  
  
Castiel didn’t get bored, and so he didn’t think it was weird to sit for hours in total silence, staring at the wall while Dean cleaned his guns meticulously. He was picking the weapons he wanted on him when he got sucked back into Purgatory. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving without Cas, but he wasn’t about to roll over and let the monsters have him, either.  
  
“You don’t seem angry,” Cas said, watching him.  
  
Dean shrugged. He was angry all right, but he was also fucking exhausted. “I guess I’m out of righteous anger,” he said.  
  
“I’ll watch over Sam for you,” Castiel said. “When you’re gone.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Thanks.”  
  
Every once in a while, Castiel would shift positions, maybe out of a need to stretch the kinks from his vessel. He stood against the wall now, watching Dean out of steady blue eyes and windblown hair.  
  
“If it makes you feel better,” Castiel continued, “you may still go to Heaven. Once your body is dead, your soul could…”  
  
Dean shot him a skeptical look. “You really believe that?”  
  
Cas hesitated. “No.”  
  
“Me neither.” Dean took a drink from the cheap whiskey in front of him. It kept the panic down, dulled the ache in his wrist. “S’all right. I’ve been there before, and you know what? Pretty much sucked.”  
  
At night, he hunched in the chair next to the couch, waiting.  _Come on, Sammy, come on. Wake up, let me see your eyes, let me see you get mad, let me make you understand…_  
  
Sam was going to be  _pissed_ , and Dean figured that would fill the rage quota for both of them.  
  
Castiel recovered slowly, cut on his face healing out of nowhere, skin recovering some of that glowy angel thing Dean was used to, posture straightening back into strength. He tried to heal Dean’s wrist and failed, instead shooting an intense pain all up Dean’s arm.  
  
“What the hell Cas!” Dean growled, shoving away from him.  
  
Cas looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I thought I was recovered enough, but…”  
  
Dean scowled and cradled his wrist, leaning back against the paneled wall. “I still have five days left. I’d rather not go early.”

  
*****

  
The Nephilim appeared in his dream that night. Dean knew it was a dream and not another vision by the lack of soul-searing pain. He recognized the Purgatory gates, though, and their tall keeper. The Nephilim was one scary motherfucker, Dean would give him that.  
  
“You failed,” the Nephilim said. “The stone is now out of your reach.”  
  
“Not yet,” Dean said sharply. “I still have five days. You promised me a month.” He’d been doing the fatalism tango in his brain since the stone had disappeared, but he found he couldn’t cop to it in front of this smug sonofabitch. He wasn’t going down like that.  
  
Dean couldn’t see the thing’s mouth or eyes, but he felt its amusement all the same.  
  
“I keep my promises,” it said. “As I expect you to keep yours.”  
  
“Like I have a choice.”  
  
“You have the choice to return here before your brother recovers.”  
  
Dean went cold. “No. Screw you.”  
  
It took a step closer, and Dean shrank back. He didn’t know what this thing could do, dream or not.  
  
“Sam will wake,” it said. “And he’ll try to stop it. And then I’ll have to take him, too.”  
  
“Promises, my ass,” Dean shouted. “That was not part of the deal.”  
  
It was suddenly very close, and Dean could see into the hood – rotting skin, teeth broken and brown, eyes sunk and maggot-chewed.  
  
“Do you want to say goodbye to Sam, or do you want to keep him safe?” Its voice had turned into a serpent of tone, slithering over Dean’s skin. Dean wanted to scream more, but his voice was suddenly choked off. The Nephilim reached for him, brown, clawed hands aiming for his throat…  
  
Dean jerked awake. Cas was leaning over him, pressing both his shoulders back against the rough fabric of the chair.  
  
“Dean, wake up,” he was saying, like he’d been saying it for a while.  
  
Dean was sweating, clammy and cold in the tepid room. His heart pounded.  
  
“Vision?” Castiel asked.  
  
Dean didn’t know. He couldn’t tell if it had been real or not. A dream? A warning?  
  
Sam slept on, face relaxed against the embroidered pillows.  
  
“You were screaming,” Castiel noted. A sideways push for more information.  
  
“I don’t scream,” Dean said automatically, but his voice was a faint grate.  
  
Castiel trailed him to the kitchen. Dean reached for a beer automatically, then set it back down. He didn’t want to drink. He might throw up.  
  
“You have to promise me that you won’t let Sam try anything,” he said, making Castiel stop and cock his head.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean no last-ditch efforts to get me out of this. If we somehow miraculously get the stone back – great. But I think we both know it’s not going to happen. And you have to keep Sam under control.”  
  
A tiny smile, so out-of-place in Castiel’s austere face. “Like I always kept you under control?”  
  
Dean shot him a dirty look. “ _Cas_.”  
  
“I’ll try,” he said.  
  
Dean leaned against the wall, hands against his temples. There was another one coming, and he’d never get back to sleep in time. “I need to lie down,” he said.  
  
There was a bedroom in the cabin that had sat, unused, since they arrived. Dean collapsed backwards onto the creaky mattress, groaning. Castiel loomed over him.  
  
“Rope. In the first aid kit. If I start going all Linda Blair.”  
  
“Linda…who?”  
  
“Nevermind. Just…rope.”  
  
Castiel nodded. “Fine.”  
  
Dean licked at his dry lips. Any minute now. He wondered what he’d see this time.  
  
Castiel was still watching him, silent and intent. “What?” Dean said, harsher than he’d intended.  
  
Cas shifted. “I miss the contact we had in Purgatory,” he said, eyes flickering away and then back to Dean’s. “I understand now, some of what Anna described when she talked about human life.”  
  
“Sex is awesome,” Dean admitted with a small smile. “And sex with me…well.”  
  
Castiel kissed him, a brush of dry lips against Dean’s, just warm breath and soft contact. It brought flashes of the two of them – up against a tree, on the cool dirt, Dean saying  _there_  and  _faster_  and  _I guess if it had to be a virgin at least it’s an angel_.  
  
By the time Dean’s hands came up to his shoulders, Castiel was backing away. “I know. Rope,” he said. He disappeared out the door, and seconds later Dean was lost, the creatures of Purgatory eating him alive.

  
*****

  
Sam woke slowly, pupils painfully dilated against the light blaring through the windows. It was daytime.  
  
He searched the room from under cracked eyelids before he let himself move. The place was unfamiliar, but it had a feel to it. A hunter’s feel. To the left, salt across the window ledges, a satellite phone, and his laptop by the wall. To the right, two shotguns set on either side of the doorway, propped up for quick access. Above, a devil’s trapped painted red on the ceiling.  
  
He was on a cramped sofa, and through the doorway in front of him he could see a small exit to the exterior of the house. A trip wire glinted in the sun.  
  
The place was new to him, but he’d passed through enough of his father’s safe houses to recognize it for what it was.  
  
There were low voices coming from the right, and Sam swung his legs to the ground, waiting for dizziness to knock him sideways. It didn’t come. He felt the gauze taped tight against his neck, the bite mark from the vampires stinging faintly. He was a little light-headed, but recognized it as hunger, not illness.  
  
He pushed his way off the couch, tripping only a little as he headed toward the voices. He picked up one of the shotguns on the way, just in case.  
  
Castiel was changing some sort of dressing on Dean’s wrist, and their heads were bent together. He could see Dean’s half-smile – that rueful tilt to his mouth that came less and less. They looked strangely intimate, and Sam was almost reluctant to make his presence known.  
  
“Hey,” he said, and Dean’s head whipped around.  
  
“Sam.” Dean was already moving toward him, pushing away Cas’s hands, eyes intent on his face. A totally open look, relief and love, and it caught Sam for a second, frozen in the doorway.  
  
“You shouldn’t be up,” Dean said. “You’ve been flat on your back for days.”  
  
“I’m fine, I’m okay,” Sam said, but he let Dean shove him down into a chair, check the dressing on his neck, put a glass of water in his hands.  
  
“Dude, your wrist,” Sam said.  
  
“It’s nothing,” Dean said.  
  
“It looks like something. It’s all – ”  
  
“I’m not the one who took a two-day nap,” Dean retorted, but there was no heat in it.  
  
“Two days?” Sam asked in disbelief. “No wonder I’m so hungry.”  
  
Dean made him pasta out of a can. Sam wouldn’t have touched it on a normal day, but he finished the bowl in three bites and then pushed it back at Dean for seconds.  
  
“Thank god you’re such a picky eater,” Dean muttered. “Or it would take a friggin’ fortune to feed you.”  
  
“Where are we?” Sam asked. For the first time he felt the difference in the air, dry and crisp instead of humid.  
  
“Oklahoma…somewhere,” Dean said.  
  
“And where’s Meg?”  
  
Dean’s jaw tightened, and Sam saw the look that passed between him and Cas.  
  
“What?” Sam asked in dread.  
  
“The stone,” Dean said. “It’s gone.”

  
*****

  
Sam researched. It was next to useless, out in the middle of nowhere with no libraries and no resources and no guiding hand. Sam didn’t even know what he was looking for. He typed desperately, hoping to stumble on the thing – the thing that would kill the Nephilim, the thing that would break a contract, the thing that would keep Dean here, and safe.  
  
There was no magic bullet.  
  
He proposed two plans to break into Hell and confront Crowley, both of which were shut down by Castiel before Sam even finished talking. Not enough firepower, suicidally reckless, a fool’s errand. His plan to summon Crowley was likewise scoffed at.  
  
“King of Hell,” Dean said. The sarcastic genius at the end was implied. “Hellhounds, hosts of demons…what about our situation makes you think we stand a chance?”  
  
It was Dean’s voice, Dean’s arched eyebrow, but it was all wrong. Because there wasn’t panic on Dean’s averted face – there was pity.  
  
“Don’t you want to find a way out of this?” Sam exploded.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do,” Dean said, but Sam had seen that particular look in Dean’s eyes before. Stoic, stubborn, resigned. If Dean had ever had any hope, it was gone now.  
  
“I can’t even look at you right now,” Sam said. He grabbed his laptop and stormed out to the car, shoved himself in the passenger seat and quietly freaked out. Dean didn’t chase him, but Sam saw him drift by the kitchen window every few minutes, peering out at him impassively.  
  
Sam didn’t know what Dean was looking for. Maybe he thought Sam was going to take off in the Impala, run all the way to California again in some useless attempt to put distance between himself and his wreck of a family. But Sam had discarded that option a long time ago. Maybe he had a chance at a normal life if Dean was gone, but as long as Dean was here, Sam was sticking with him. And he was going to do everything he could to keep Dean here, even if Dean himself wasn’t lifting a finger to help.  
  
It was probably some big brother instinct thing. Dean couldn’t  _not_  check on Sam, even though Sam was thirty years old and twice his size and had taken down more demons than most other hunters had ever laid eyes on. Dean would be checking on Sam as long as they both had breath, and maybe even after they didn’t.  
  
Sam gave himself twenty minutes to cool down, then trudged back to the house.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said to Dean’s raised eyebrows.  
  
“For throwing a hissy fit or slamming my baby’s door hard enough to bend the frame?”  
  
“Dean, come on.”  
  
“So both,” Dean said, and Sam unwillingly cracked a smile.  
  
Dean’s eyes were a gold-flecked green in the dying sunlight, skin lightly tanned from the sun. The left side of his face was still a rainbow of sickly yellow and purple, but the swelling had gone down enough for Dean to look like Dean. Handsome and prickly, dramatic cheek bones and soft mouth under the stubble. He stood there, broad and sure-footed, arms loose by his sides, reading Sam’s face with the ease of thirty years of practice. Dean had put himself between Sam and danger so many times, without a flinch. Why was it that Sam could never do the same without falling to pieces?  
  
“Dinner?” Dean asked. “Spaghetti carbonara from a can. Can’t go wrong.”  
  
“Gross.”  
  
“Picky bitch.”  
  
Dean’s mouth curved, and Sam loved him so much in that second, every goddamn frustrating inch of him. He bit down on his tongue to keep himself from stepping forward, grabbing Dean and kissing him like the climax of some crappy romantic comedy.  
  
“Yeah, well, we’ll see who’s laughing when you have a heart attack at forty.”  _Optimism_ , Sam told himself. If either of them lived to see forty Sam’s heart would probably stop from the pure shock of it.  
  
“Please. My ticker is fine,” Dean said, turning and heading for the kitchen. “A little red meat never hurt anyone.”  
  
Sam followed him, laptop clutched at his side.


	10. Chapter 10

  
**Chapter 10**

_Friday_   


  
Dean had another vision in the morning. One second Sam was watching him scratch at some nonexistent dirt on the Impala, the next he was on his knees, teeth bared in agony and tendons corded.  
  
Sam got to him before he hit his jerking head against anything solid, but it wasn’t quick enough to stop him from biting his tongue. Sam shoved a dirty rag in his mouth and tried not to see the way blood stained his bottom lip.  
  
It was terrifying to see Dean, in pain and out of control. As long as Sam could remember, Dean had always used his body like a weapon. Deliberate movements, sharp and purposeful, even when he was hurt. Or tired. Or drunk or horny or hungry or any of the other things that plagued them on the road. His face might give something away, but never his body. They were both too well-trained for that.  
  
Sam pinned Dean’s shaking body to the ground and tried not to throw up.  
  
After that, Sam took to trailing him everywhere, determined to be there next time Dean went down. Dean snarled at him, and Sam made sure to use his most patient voice when he answered. Dean called him a pain in the ass, and they made their way through the day like that, Sam carrying his laptop like an oxygen tank.  
  
Castiel watched them out of silent blue eyes and said nothing. Sam felt like he was being judged, but that was the norm for Cas. Once he’d gotten that whole free will thing into his head, he really went full-throttle.  
  
“Cas,” Sam said. Dean had gone to the bathroom, and Sam let him go, even though his brain was screaming at him to follow, to protect. His panic was at an ever-present simmer, riding just under his voice and breath.  
  
“Cas, we have to talk about it. We’re out of options.”  
  
“I’ve already given you my opinion.”  
  
“I know but…what other choice do we have? Dean’s dying. Are you honestly just going to let him without lifting a finger?”  
  
Cas’s eyes were troubled, and a little angry. Castiel had spent thousands of years protecting humanity, and Sam figured his first instinct would always be to preserve the safety of the many over the safety of the Winchesters.  
  
But then, Sam figured Castiel was also a little in love with Dean. Sam could use that, if he needed to.  
  
“I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t think it work,” Sam said urgently. “But this could save Dean  _and_  keep Purgatory closed. Don’t you think it’s worth the risk?”  
  
“I think that Dean wouldn’t – ” And then he cut off, because Dean was standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised.  
  
“Am I interrupting something?” Dean asked, a mixture of wariness and warning in his tone.  
  
“No,” Sam said. “Nothing.”  
  
“Well, that’s convincing,” Dean said.  
  
“Your brother – ” Castiel started, and Sam overrode him with a sharp look.  
  
“It’s  _nothing_ ,” he repeated. “Nothing important.”  
  
“Fine,” Dean said. “But only middle school girls tell secrets. FYI.”

  
*****

  
Four days before Dean’s clock ran out, Sam saw the world end.  
  
It took Dean first, splitting him open from the gullet down, Purgatory’s hordes pouring out of him like swarming bees. Then, as Sam was still screaming for Dean, they took Castiel and speared him through the throat, light exploding out of him with blinding intensity.  
  
The creatures were both like and unlike the things that he and Dean fought. Werewolves, but bigger. Hulking and with dangerously curved claws. Vampires, but stranger – emaciated and feral, with more teeth than they should have. There were dragons breathing fire, things that looked like giant insects, with legs as tall as Sam. And there were things that looked human, but grinned as they peeled the skin from Sam’s friends.  
  
He saw his classmates torched, Becca’s neck broken, his coworkers slaughtered. He saw Jess on the ceiling, and he knew that wasn’t right, because Jess was dead and couldn’t die again. His father stepped out of the blackness with glowing eyes and called him  _demon_ , and discharged the Colt into his heart.  
  
Sam drove away from it, but the air was spotted with blood, and the Impala’s windshield wipers couldn’t clear the way. He stumbled out of the car, and when he looked up Dean was laughing at him, still with half his neck flapping open in the hot wind.  
  
When the smoke cleared, and Sam could open his eyes again, there was nothing. The world had been razed, flattened, and for some reason they’d left him alive and alone. He put his hands on the hood of the Impala, and found the paint was melting off. The mountains were turning to sludge on the horizon, the sky lit up red. Everything was slipping away, and he began to hyperventilate. He woke up choking on his tongue.  
  
He rolled over onto all fours immediately, gagging. He could still taste the burning flesh in the air.  
  
He heard a thump from the bedroom, and he forced himself to move.  
  
Dean was sitting on the floor, head in his hands.  
  
“Vision?” Sam managed to ask. His voice sounded like he’d actually been breathing smoke, hoarse and ruined.  
  
“No, nightmare,” Dean said, short and low.  
  
Sam didn’t know how he knew – he just did. “You saw it happen,” he said. “Purgatory opening.”  
  
Dean picked his head up, eyes deep-set and drawn in the dark.  
  
Sam tried for a commiserating smile. “I saw it too.”  
  
“Fuck,” Dean said. “Just – fuck.”

  
*****

  
Sam ran in the mornings. He’d gone to the gym every day in Denver. He’d put on headphones and turned on the treadmill and run, not because something was chasing him but because it made him feel healthy, and that was a luxury he had in his new life.  
  
He gave it up for Dean, but he’d been searching and emailing and making phone calls for two days without any progress, and he thought he’d go insane if he spent one more second in the cabin. So he ran, traipsing through miles of woods.  
  
It turned out to be a terrible idea. When his hands weren’t busy, his mind went into overdrive, and then he saw snippets of his and Dean’s shared dream, playing through his head on repeat. The most gruesome parts – the smell, the initial split of Dean’s throat, his father spitting hate and contempt at him – were the ones that seemed to get stuck.  
  
It felt like a warning, and that was what scared him the most.  
  
Dean was up to his elbows in engine grease when Sam finally made his way back. “Hey,” Sam said, and Dean grunted at him from under the propped hood of the Impala.  
  
“So I was thinking,” Sam started.  
  
“Oh god, we’re not gonna have another talk, are we?” Dean asked. “I’m about out of sentimentality.”  
  
Sam ignored him. “This dream we had. Doesn’t it feel weird to you?”  
  
“We’ve shared dreams before,” Dean said, not looking at him.  
  
“Yeah but…usually there’s a reason, right? I mean, there’s some monster trying to kill us or something trying to manipulate us. Maybe this was just that Nephilim thing, trying to scare you straight.”  
  
“Well, he gets an A+ then,” Dean said. “Because I’m pretty goddamn freaked.”  
  
“But if there’s something else putting pictures in our heads, then it’s probably not real, right? I mean, it doesn’t have to come true.”  
  
Dean stared at the engine, and Sam could see his jaw working. “Maybe,” he said finally.  
  
“Why do I feel like you’re not convinced?”  
  
“Because,” Dean sighed. “Cas said the Nephilim  _wants_  us to open Purgatory. If that’s true, why would he be trying to scare us away from it?”  
  
Sam bit down on the inside of his lip. So much for that theory.  
  
“I’ve thought about it,” Dean said, “and there’s another possibility.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Maybe it’s not the Nephilim trying to scare us. Maybe it’s something else.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like God.”  
  
Sam stared at him, and Dean slammed down the hood of the Impala, wiping grease on his jeans. “Maybe this is God telling us to back off, Sammy. And maybe we should listen.”

  
*****

  
Sam didn’t look at him the rest of the day, but it wasn’t too hard for Dean to figure out what he was feeling. Panic. Frustration. Anger. The usual.  
  
He ran his theory by Castiel, and Cas frowned, considering. “It’s rare,” he said. “But God has taken an interest in you two before. It’s not impossible.”  
  
He changed the oil on the Impala, carefully wiped down the road dirt from the last two weeks, and made adjustments to the engine until she started with a smooth purr. If he had to go, he wasn’t going to leave his car in anything less than perfect condition.  
  
He tried to imagine his dad being proud of him for that, and then he remembered he’d decided to blame his dad for the whole fucked state of his existence and offered a “screw you” to the heavens instead. His dad would probably kick his ass to Timbuktu and back if they ever met again, and Dean found he could look forward to that.  
  
Dean couldn’t face even one more night of canned soup, so he drove out to find them dinner. Sam, of course, got on his ass about driving with his brain still acting like a vision magnet.  
  
“I may only have a few days left to drive my baby,” Dean said. “Don’t take that away from me, bro.”  
  
Sam wasn’t the only one who could manipulate.  
  
Sam had glued himself to his computer again, and even though it made him itchy, Dean couldn’t bring himself to snap at the kid. Dean had done this to him. This was  _Dean’s fault_ , showing up and disappearing in his life over and over again. Sam was strong but he had his own brand of crazy to deal with. He’d been managing without Dean. Dean figured the best gift he could give Sam now was to trust him to survive this time and just  _stay gone_.  
  
He made Cas come with him, because angel company was better than no company, and they found a Wendy’s forty miles from their safe house. He got a salad for Sam, two cheeseburgers and fries for himself, and a Baconator for Cas.  
  
Cas looked at him, confused. “I don’t…”  
  
“Come on,” Dean needled. “You can’t knock it till you try it. Horseman-induced cravings don’t count.”  
  
“I’d prefer not to.”  
  
“Cas,” Dean said sternly. “It’s my dying wish. Are you really gonna ignore my dying wish?”  
  
Cas sighed and took a bite. And then another. And then his eyes got really wide and he took three more.  
  
“Good, huh?” Dean said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.  
  
“I admit,” Castiel said slowly. “It’s good. One of God’s miracle.”  
  
“One of Dave Thomas’s miracles,” Dean said. “But close enough.”

  
*****

  
“Find anything?” Dean asked when he slid the salad across the table to Sam. Sam blinked at him slowly, like he was having trouble focusing. Dean didn’t like how pale he looked.  
  
“Oh. Uh…not yet. No.”  
  
“Eat,” Dean said.  
  
“I’m not – ”  
  
“Eat or I’ll kick your ass.”  
  
Sam sighed, but he pushed his laptop aside and opened the salad. He picked at it, and Dean wondered, for the millionth time, how this conversation could possibly go.  _Sam, it’s time for me to die_  just didn’t seem like good strategy. Not when his brother was six-four and could throw the tantrum to end all tantrums.  
  
He sat down, at the table, watching Sam nibble at his damn lettuce. How he ever got so goddamn big would always be a mystery to Dean.  
  
“Listen,” he started.  
  
Sam looked up at him expectantly, eyes still half-fuzzy from staring at a computer screen all day. Dean couldn’t forget how easily Sam’s skin had split in their dream last night, the precise way his body bent backwards when the bullet buried itself in his forehead. Sometimes Sam was a stranger, so tall and serious that Dean didn’t know what to do with him. And sometimes it was like he hadn’t aged at all, young and scraggly and wide-eyed with trust.  
  
Sam tilted his head. “Dean?”  
  
Dean cleared his throat, tried again.  _You think you still need me_ , he wanted to say.  _But you don't. Live a full life. Eat every once in a goddamn while._  
  
Instead, he said. “Another beer?”  
  
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Sure,” he answered cautiously.  
  
Damn it. Sam didn’t look fooled by the casual tone, because Sam wasn’t a drooling moron. Dean had never been good at prompting these talks. He’d always let Sam prod and needle the truth out of him, and now he was like a goddamn infant with a grenade.  
  
His head was starting to ache, and his muscles tensed without his permission. The visions had begun to multiply. He’d see three different scenes at once, sometimes four. Purgatory was coming for him, bleeding into his brain, and all Dean could do was try to hold it off as long as he could.  
  
He paused for a second, head stuck in the cooler, crisp air hitting his eyelids. It was temporary relief in the stale air of the cabin.  
  
He made it as far as the doorway, and then it hit him. Too quick, no warning. He’d gotten better at judging the timing; he usually had at least an hour of pounding temples before the vision took him. It came for him painfully fast this time, new and shocking in its power. The damp bottles slipped out of his fingers and rolled across the linoleum  
  
He felt his head bounce off the table’s edge before he went down. Sam appeared above him, shouting. Images washed over him – dark violence and blood, vein-bursting adrenaline, the fear of being hunted. He’d been ripped apart before, but this was different. It was a thousand creatures, a thousand agonies, all without the outlet of a scream. He didn’t have enough air in his lungs.  
  
Sam was hauling him up, pinning him down to something soft. A t-shirt, shoved in his mouth, and that made it worse. Purgatory was pulling him down. He tried to keep his focus on Sam’s hands around his wrist, on Sam’s deep voice shouting, but the sensations slid away. The world rippled around him, and he went under.

  
*****

  
_Dean Winchester is coming back. That, at least, is something to look forward to.  
  
He liked being Dick Roman, but Purgatory is manageable, too. He’s top of the food chain anyway, even without his brethren. The food here is disgusting, but he’ll survive.  
  
The main problem is the boredom. Everything is too easy to kill here. There’s no need to hide or plot or put even the slightest bit of creativity into his kills. There’s no _inspiration _. Now that Eve is gone, the only thing that’s any fun at all is the Nephilim. Without the stone, they’re evenly matched.  
  
The stone is gone, according to that last creature he’d eaten. Lost by Dean Winchester, which is just one more reason to make him suffer instead of eating him outright. All his careful planning, smuggling it out of Purgatory, threatening those mutant bloodsuckers, and Dean Winchester had turned it over to the demon king.  
  
But his failure means he’s coming back, if rumors are true. Back in Purgatory, without the protection of his angel. It’s almost too perfect to contemplate.  
  
A scream rips through the air, and he knows it’s the Nephilim, torturing some soul for information. The Nephilim is the gatekeeper, slave to God’s will, loyal in his own primitive way. He’s not as old as the Leviathan, but he’s old enough to remember Earth before humans ruined it. Just like the rest of them, he wants out.  
  
The Winchester brothers might tear down the walls to Purgatory. They might be stupid enough to do it. Doesn’t matter. He’ll find them anyway. He’ll make Dean watch as he tears Sam to shreds, and then he’ll eat them both. Slowly. While they’re still alive. The angel will be tougher, but at the very least he’ll suffer at the death of his friends.  
  
He could amuse himself for hours, just thinking of the ways he’ll torture Dean Winchester.  
  
He pictures him, bones cracking like straw, face a rictus of agony, jagged stumps for arms. He can almost taste the blood, wants to lick at the air in anticipation. He never thought he would waste hatred on a human, but it burns through him.  
  
In his mind, he spears Dean Winchester from behind, intestines tumbling out of him onto the dirt. He yanks on the viscera until the body stops jerking, until the eyes go blank. Then he leans down and begins to eat._

  
*****

  
The first thing Dean noticed when he woke was the heaviness. He felt waterlogged, pinned down by some second skin. His mouth was tacky and bitter, and he recognized the aftermath of blood on his tongue. His eyes were stinging, and he could still feel the razor-sharp tang on his tongue, the sickness of Dick Roman, hungering for his blood.  
  
He was in the cabin’s small bedroom. The flimsy curtains were pulled over the windows, but outside Dean could see the dark outline of the trees. Night, which meant he’d been out for at least a few hours.  
  
Sam appeared at the bedroom door, then stopped short when he saw Dean’s eyes open.  
  
“You’re awake,” he said.  
  
“No shit, Sherlock,” was what Dean wanted to say, but his tongue felt as heavy as the rest of him. He focused on nodding instead.  
  
Sam dropped his tall form onto the foot of the bed, staring. Dean’s head was still pounding, which wasn’t a good sign. Before, he’d gotten a break between visions. Now it was just a steady pain. He might not get any warning before the next one.  
  
“How long was I out?”  
  
Sam lifted a despondent shoulder. “Six hours.”  
  
Dean cursed and tried to sit up. “Six fucking hours?” Sam moved to help him up, and Dean shrugged him off. Six hours meant it was almost morning again. Another night wasted  
  
“How could you let me sleep that long? You might as well have shoved me right in the casket.” Sam’s faced twisted, but Dean was too tired and battered to apologize. Dean sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the heaviness to lift, for his limbs to push him up. It didn’t happen.  
  
“Dean,” Sam said. “We need to talk about the ritual.”  
  
“Nothing to talk about. Some sigils, some Latin, and presto. Aloha Purgatory.” Fuck, his  _head_.  
  
“Not that ritual.”  
  
Dean looked at him sharply. “I burned that fucking book for a reason, Sam.”  
  
“I kept a copy,” Sam said. Not angry, but stubborn. Resolved.  
  
“Of course you did,” Dean muttered.  
  
“Look, “ Sam said. “We’ve been searching. Cas and me. And…there’s no other way. We’ve looked everywhere. If I thought there was another solution….”  
  
Dean looked away, disgusted. Not with Sam, but with himself, for considering this insane plan.  
  
“Fine,” Dean said. “Talk.”  
  
“I know you’re scared – ”  
  
“Pissed we’re even talking about this, actually.”  
  
“And I know you think it’s risky – ”  
  
“Completely stupid.”  
  
“But hear me out. We have almost everything we need. We just need to figure out this maker thing, and then we’re good. All it takes is for you to hold on to me, and me to hold on to you. We’ve been doing that our whole lives. It can work, Dean.”  
  
Sam’s face was open, earnest, eyes wide and bright. Dean couldn’t stand it, that look.  
  
“Yeah?” he said, voice low. “And what happens when the strain is too much, and you split apart?”  
  
Sam’s eyes dropped.  
  
“He dies,” came Castiel’s cool voice from the doorway. “Or if he survives, he’ll probably go insane. Or maybe he’ll lose his soul again in the process. Or he could come out of it a completely different person. No one knows exactly what will happen when a broken soul pieces itself back together.”  
  
Sam still wasn’t looking at him.  
  
Cas kept talking. “Even with a healthy soul, one that hasn’t been through what Sam’s been through, it could mean death. For Sam…”  
  
Dean had heard enough. “You know I can’t let you,” he said. “Sammy, I’m sorry, but don’t ask me to do this.” The heaviness in his voice was more than exhaustion. Sam was looking at him, mouth pressed together like he didn’t know what to do anymore, and Dean didn’t have an answer for him.  
  
Sam stood up and walked out, motions quick and jerky.  
  
“It’s the best choice,” Castiel said quietly. “You can’t risk the consequences.”  
  
The world burned to nothing, or Sam shattered into a million pieces. Unlivable choices, both of them.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said.  
  
He pushed himself off the mattress, taking a second to stabilize himself on the floorboards. Cas watched him with clinical eyes. “The visions are getting worse,” he said. “It won’t be long now.”  
  
“You’re just a bucket of sunshine, aren’t you?” Dean said sourly.  
  
Sam was sulking, somewhere in the cabin or out in the woods, and Dean was okay with a lot of messed-up things, but dying with Sam still mad at him wasn’t one of them.  
  
Sam was on the couch where he’d taken his two-day nap, staring bleakly out the window.  
  
“Sam,” Dean said.  
  
“How can you just give up like this?” Sam asked, hushed. “How fucked up are you, that you’re just going to lay down and take it, like it doesn’t matter, like…”  
  
“Hey,” Dean said sharply. “This isn’t giving up. But there are lines I won’t cross. You should know that by now.”  
  
“Fuck you and your stupid lines,” Sam said, still not looking at him.  
  
Dean dragged himself over to Sam, stood right in front of him until Sam had no choice but to look up into his face.  
  
“You and me, we’ve been through pretty much everything,” Dean said, forcing his eyes to stay locked to Sam’s. “We’re both living on borrowed time now, and maybe…maybe this is…”  
  
“Don’t say it,” Sam cut him off, quick and desperate.  
  
Dean bit his tongue and said nothing.  
  
“It’s just…” Sam’s eyes were getting that teary look. Dean wanted to grab him by the face to make it stop, or maybe put hands on his shoulders and shake him. Hurt on more hurt. He wished he’d figured out another way.  
  
“Once you’re gone,” Sam said, controlling his voice with effort, “what the hell am I supposed to do?”  
  
“Do what you were doing before,” Dean said helplessly. “Live your life. Just like you told me to do when you locked Lucifer back in the cage. That’s always been your dream, right?”  
  
“Maybe when I thought you were really gone,” Sam said in a low voice. “But knowing what will happen in Purgatory – I’ll never be okay with that.”  
  
It was still too dark out to work on the car, and the vision of himself as Dick Roman's next meal was still too fresh for him to want breakfast. He lay down in the dark, eyes closed, but sleep didn’t come. Instead, he listened to the clicking of Sam’s keyboard and the swishing steps of Castiel, pacing slowly in the front yard.  
  
The sky was starting to lighten when Sam appeared in the doorway, pressing his hands against the frame.  
  
“Dean,” he said.  
  
“What?” Dean asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew.  
  
Sam took a few tentative steps toward him. He crawled on to the foot of the bed and over Dean’s body, holding himself there. Dean looked up at him, the feverish intensity in his face. He swallowed, and Sam saw it, traced the movement of Dean’s throat with his eyes.  
  
Sam leaned down and put his mouth against Dean’s Adam’s apple, sucking. His long hair dragged against Dean’s collarbone, and Dean felt his own breathing lose its rhythm.  
  
Sam lowered himself down, more than covering Dean’s length, and Dean grunted. “You weigh a ton.”  
  
Sam’s arms went around his neck, and then they breathed together, chest to chest. Sam was shivering a little, and Dean closed his eyes.  
  
“Your stupid deals,” Sam said against his throat, and he sounded thirteen years old. Dean felt his fingers, pressing.  
  
Dean knew the feeling. He’d been certain, at times, that the only way to keep Sam tethered to life was to physically hold him, anchor him down with two hands no matter how much he squirmed.  
  
Sam’s Stanford years had been hell, not only because Dean missed him like a hole in the chest, but because Sam was physically gone and therefore vulnerable. A phone call would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have quelled the way Dean was constantly turning his head, searching the night and hearing his father’s voice say, “Where’s Sammy?”  
  
Dad felt it too, and that just made it all the worse. Dean would see him turn to look for Sam, then remember and stop, his mouth pressing white. Sam’s absence was more disruptive than his presence ever could have been, and Dean remembered taking him to the ground the night he’d broken into his Stanford apartment, pinning him there under his hands, and finally breathing for the first time in years.  
  
But Sam had died once with Dean’s hands right on him, uselessly trying to protect him against something that was already done. They couldn’t protect each other with hands or lips, no matter how hard they fought.  
  
Sam grew hard against him, and Dean felt him moving in little jerks, rubbing himself off. His mouth was still in the same spot, endlessly licking and sucking in a way that would leave a massive hickey tomorrow.  
  
“Slow down, tiger,” Dean said, working one hand down between them. He slid it under Sam’s shorts and cupped him, and Sam groaned, vibrating against his neck. He worked Sam off slowly, coating them both in sweat and fuzzy arousal. Sam came too soon, and Dean wanted to kiss his shoulder, maybe roll them both over and fuck him. His neck was damp, and he didn’t think it was all sweat.  
  
He heaved Sam to his side instead, and Sam went, boneless. The circles under his eyes were stark in the bright moonlight. Dean curled into him and drew his legs up, arranging them forehead to forehead on the pillows. Sam reached for him with one endless arm, found where he was hard under his boxers.  
  
“Don’t,” Dean said.  
  
“But you’re – ”  
  
“Go to sleep, Sam.”  
  
He could tell Sam wanted to say something bitchy, but he closed his eyes instead and was asleep in minutes, dead to the world.  
  
Dean watched him, following the steady motion of his chest and the way his mouth went soft in sleep. His cock ached, but he didn’t want to jerk off in the bathroom, by himself. He wanted this: Sam safe and sleeping, hand curled on Dean’s arm like an anchor.  
  
Two days, Dean thought.


	11. Chapter 11

  
**Chapter 11**

_Sunday_   


  
Dean shook Sam awake as the sun was cutting through the morning mist. He blinked at his computer screen, useless search results still mocking him in the young light. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.  
  
“Sorry,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair.  
  
“It’s okay,” Dean said, slouching into the chair opposite him. “You needed it.” He pushed a cup of coffee across the table to Sam, and Sam took it gratefully.  
  
“Yeah, well I slept for two days straight,” Sam said, and he heard some of his own frustration creeping into his tone. “Gotta make up for lost time.”  
  
“You need to get yourself recovered.” Dean’s voice was mild enough, but Sam’s anxiety bubbled over momentarily.  
  
“I can’t,” he said. “There’s no time. I’ll sleep when – ” He stopped.  
  
“What?” Dean asked, lips quirking. “When I’m dead?”  
  
“When you’re safe,” Sam said firmly. “I’ll sleep when we’ve figured this out.”  
  
Dean nodded. Sam watched him covertly, half his attention trying to focus on his computer screen, the other examining the lines at the corner of Dean’s eyes, the heavy way his mouth looked. He looked tired, and Sam wished he could shake some life into him. Dean always had a way of making it better, of making Sam believe it was going to get better, even when it wasn’t. Sam had never figured out how to return the favor.  
  
His latest search focused on finding an alternate way to control the Leviathans. Maybe if they offered a substitute, the Nephilim would let Dean go. Maybe…  
  
 _Trade_ , whispered his second self. The one that still danced blood cravings through his veins.  _If it were you, Dean would trade._  
  
He shut that thought down ruthlessly. Even if he could, Dean would never forgive him.  
  
Always, always, the blood ritual floated in the back of his mind. His blood. Dean’s blood. A possession – Dean’s silver ring, maybe. And blood of the maker. He should be able to figure out that one, tiny thing. They’d deciphered rituals far older and more complicated than this one.  
  
They ate a package of stale donuts for breakfast, split between them on the table. Dean trailed a finger around the rim of his coffee cup, hands never still.  
  
“Hey Sam?” he said. Sam’s gaze kept getting lost in the computer font, drifting instead to the scattering of white sugar by Dean’s coffee cup.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Remember when we were kids, when Dad hunted that wraith in Fort Scott? He left us alone in a motel for a weekend – the one with the fish lamps. I think you were twelve, maybe.”  
  
Sam remembered. It was June, and he’d just finished three months of sixth grade at Alberti Middle School in Tennessee. He’d been furious, fuming, when his father had picked them up and moved them again. He’d taken Sam away from his first girlfriend, his first soccer trophy, and a regular spot at a cafeteria table. Dad had disappeared within hours of check-in, and Sam had taken his anger out on Dean.  
  
“You were such a brat,” Dean said. “You sat inside the whole time and wouldn’t move from the hotel bed, and you threw the remote control at me when I tried to drag you out for breakfast.  
  
Sam smiled. “You kept bringing me candy from the vending machine, and you got more and more pissed every time I refused to eat it.”  
  
Dean huffed a laugh, and Sam saw that he was staring down into his coffee cup, smiling.  
  
“I tried to get you to go to that lake thing nearby to swim – some tourist trap.”  
  
“I wouldn’t go,” Sam remembered. “And you called me a pain in the ass and went by yourself.”  
  
Dean turned his head slightly, eyes glinting green-gold in the sun. “I didn’t go, Sam. I got as far as the parking lot, and then I sat on a rock and waited for you.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I thought you’d come running after me. You always had before, but…” Dean shrugged, rueful. “That time you didn’t. I waited there for hours.”  
  
“Dean…” Sam hadn’t realized he could feel worse than he already did. Guilt lay thick over his fear.  
  
Dean was smiling again, wan and self-mocking. “I probably should have figured out then that you weren’t gonna follow me and Dad around forever.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” Sam asked. His voice sounded a little funny. Just a little thick.  
  
Dean looked him right in the eye. “I want to go there, Sam. I have two days left. Let’s just leave this shit for a few hours and go. I never got to.”  
  
Sam’s every instinct told him to fight. They didn’t have time, they needed to research, they had to spend every last second they had left trying to fix this…  
  
But Dean was looking at him calmly, no expectation or disappointment in his eyes. Just…waiting.  
  
“Okay,” Sam said, and he tried to smile. “Let’s go.”

  
*****

  
It was a three-hour drive to Fort Scott. They left Castiel, the laptop, and most of their weapons behind. Dean played Zeppelin at a particularly blaring volume that left no room for conversation, and Sam was fine with that. He was still recovering from their last heart-to-heart.  
  
The sun turned his arm a pale gold through the window, and Sam thought of years of uneven tans, his right arm and Dean’s left darkened from hours in the car, forearms resting and relaxed on the seat. Dean sang a little, absent and off-key, and Sam looked out the window and hummed along, more charmed than annoyed.  
  
Three weeks ago he’d been happy at college, at work, at an apartment that didn’t rent by the week. Now he shook from lack of sleep and shitty food, he hadn’t showered in days, and his sore throat still reminded him hourly of a vampire’s nightmare fangs ripping into him.  
  
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so at peace.  
  
Signs for the lake began ten miles out on the highway, including absurd pictures of palm trees and photogenic couples embracing in the blue depths. They followed the arrows to a rural set of back roads, ending in a sandy parking lot.  
  
The lake was little more than a jagged rip in the ground, twenty feet across and thirty long. Rocks and moss lined the walls, and it was so crystal clear that Sam could see straight through to the tapered bottom. Someone had erected a diving board over the deep end, and two separate families had spread blankets on the surrounding grass.  
  
It was idyllic, sparkling and sunny, and he and Dean had no place there.  
  
“Now what?” he asked, leaning against the side of the Impala. The metal was hot to touch under the afternoon sun. He could feel sweat beginning to prickle beneath his layers of cotton and denim.  
  
Dean shrugged, unreadable under his sunglasses. He started to walk a perimeter of the lake, giving it a wide berth like he was assessing its threat level. Sam bit down on a smile. The two families were shooting them uneasy glances, and Sam thought about the picture they must make – silent and tall, gleaming black car and dusty boots, sizing up a miniscule body of water like it might swallow them alive.  
  
He walked over to the diving board, testing its spring with one foot.  
  
“Hey Dean,” he said. “I dare you.”

  
*****

  
Sam ended up going off the diving board first, stripped to his boxers. Dean kept his t-shirt and jeans on, like that would somehow protect him if a demon came calling. Both mothers watched them with interested eyes, and Sam ignored them.  
  
The lake had fish, which made Dean swear and splash and skitter away. Sam stood very still, and after a while the tiny things came up and touched at his skin, nibbling.  
  
“Gross,” Dean said, appalled.  
  
“No grosser than your smelly feet,” Sam said, staring down in fascination. It felt almost like a massage, gentle and constant.  
  
They had brought a cooler with beers and sandwiches, and they dried off on the grass when they got sick of swimming.  
  
Dean refused to touch him. “Get your fish cooties away from me,” he said, and Sam shook out his hair, spraying brackish water all over both of them.  
  
“Dude, the food. The food!” Dean said, panicked, and so Sam lay back, stretched out in the sun. The families picked up and left, and Sam felt himself drifting, dozing. He’d assumed he wouldn’t sleep again until Dean’s clock ran out, but the water and the heat did a number on him. The grass was the softest kind, smooth and sweet, and with Dean propped against a tree next to him, Sam slept.  
  
When he woke up, it was to the feeling of fingertips, cool and light as a breeze, drifting through his hair.  
  
Sam turned on his side, looking up. “Dean,” he said.  
  
He caught Dean’s wrist and pulled, and Dean came, jaw tight and knees sliding to either side of Sam’s hips. Dean was looking down, but Sam could feel the careful motion of his fingers, so tentative in the harsh quiet of the lake.  
  
Thumbs slid into the brackets of Sam’s hips, and then Dean’s mouth followed. His own breathing wouldn’t stay steady. Dean kissed his way up the center of Sam’s stomach, and Sam pulled at his stiffened t-shirt, tugging it over his head. It was around five, Sam guessed from the position of the sun. He’d slept for almost an hour.  
  
He was hard, but then, it didn’t take much of Dean to get him hard. Dean had been his brother and his lover and his partner all rolled into one, so Sam figured he was programmed for it now.  
  
Dean moved up to his neck, and then his jaw, all the while pressing uncharacteristically soft kisses everywhere. Tasting him, or…  
  
 _Memorizing me_ , Sam thought with a sudden stab of pain. Dean had never functioned well alone, and Sam knew he was teetering on the edge of eternity by himself.  
  
Sam sat up, suddenly desperate. Dean skidded down into the crook of his hips, unsurprised. Through his boxers, Sam felt how hard he was, a hot length pressed along the muscles of Sam’s stomach. Dean’s mouth was shiny and flushed, and Sam kissed him. They didn’t do this, this soft thing. This kissing thing. But Dean’s mouth had been the star of plenty of Sam’s fantasies over the years, and maybe he needed to memorize Dean, too.  
  
Dean let him, shucking his boxers without breaking the lock of their lips, pulling Sam’s shorts down with a sure hand. And then Dean lifted his hips and lowered himself onto Sam’s cock, bit by torturous bit, with Sam rocking in frenzied impatience.  
  
Dean’s eyes were unfocused, looking somewhere beyond Sam, and Sam really fucking hated that. He put his mouth against the cord of Dean’s neck and bit, hard enough to draw blood. Dean jerked, eyes shooting back to his.  
  
“ _Ow_. God damn vampire,” he said, hoarse and breathless, but Sam was too busy licking to answer. Dean’s taste, sweat and copper, mixing on his tongue.  
  
Sam wanted to tumble Dean backwards, properly fuck away this awful tension and fear, but something stopped him. Something in the way Dean was gripping his shoulders, maybe. This was too slow, not deep enough, not rough enough. But Dean’s hands were slipping up into Sam’s hair, and he was whispering  _Sam, fuck Sammy please_  all strangled in Sam’s ear, and Sam couldn’t bear to make that stop.  
  
He reached between them to get Dean off, just give him some release, but he barely touched him before Dean came, clenching around his cock, fingers bruising and face crammed into Sam’s neck. He jerked violently, truncated grunts vibrating against Sam’s skin, and then Sam did what his body told him. He spread Dean under him and thrust, deep and hard, until he came.  
  
They lay stuck to each other for endless minutes. Dean’s eyes were slitted, his mouth soft, and he looked nothing like peaceful.  
  
Sam wanted that post-sex cocoon of sleep and satiety, but he couldn’t get there. He was on the verge of tears instead. He pushed himself off of Dean, kicked his jeans the rest of the way off, and waded into the water. He shivered off some of the emotion, letting the water take away sweat and spun and the blades of grass ground into his back.  
  
He washed himself, splashing his shoulders, dunking his hair, rubbing down his stomach. By the time he was finished, Dean was sitting up, looking at him. Sam didn’t meet his eyes as he walked back, grabbing his clothes from the ground. The fabric smelled like sun and soil and fresh grass.  
  
“We should go,” Sam said. The sun’s light was starting to fade.

  
*****

  
They stopped for food on the way home, some truck stop off the interstate with terrible coffee and maple syrup from a plastic-topped bottle. Sam couldn’t have eaten if his life depended on it, and even Dean picked at his waffle, disinterested. Dean got up to use the restroom halfway through, and within a minute the empty space across the table grew too wide.  
  
Sam followed him, ignoring Dean’s raised eyebrow when came through the door, turning the lock behind him.  
  
“Lonely?” Dean asked, and then Sam pushed him, hips against the sink, head touching the mirror, thighs spread obscenely wide for Sam to slide between.  
  
“Kinky,” Dean said, mouth smirking and eyes shining dark and desperate. Sam kissed him to shut him up, tilted his head back far enough to suck at the softest part of his throat.  
  
Panic had been eating at him for days, but for the first time despair was creeping in. He’d fucked up somehow. He wasn’t going to save Dean. He hadn’t been paying attention for a year and a half, and this was the price that both of them were going to pay. Dean, gone again.  
  
Sam sucked him off, knees scraping against the dirty bathroom tile. Dean was slower to harden this time, slower to come, but Sam knew all the tricks. He licked up the underside of Dean’s cock, let the head push against the back of his throat as he dragged a spit-damp hand across Dean’s stomach.  
  
Dean’s cheeks were flushed, jaw rock hard to keep from crying out, and in the mirror, Sam could see the clench of Dean’s shoulders with every pull of his lips. He wasn’t looking at Sam, and Sam knew why. Eye contact would make the whole thing fall apart. They were down to lasts – last meal, last fuck, last stretch of open road. He didn’t want to see that truth in Dean’s eyes any more than Dean wanted to see it in his.  
  
Dean made a guttural noise when he came, just a low rasp with his head banging back against the mirror. Sam stayed, forehead pressed to the trembling skin of Dean’s stomach, hands around his thighs.  
  
“At least I taught you well,” Dean said, still a little breathless, and Sam choked on his laugh.

  
*****

  
They walked back to the car, sticky and lit with secret sex. A foot away, Dean tossed the keys to Sam. Sam caught them, surprised.  
  
“You want me to drive?”  
  
“You’d better,” Dean said. He was looking at the ground. “I think - ”  
  
And then he crumpled, knees buckling under him, hands pressed against his head, and sounds ripping from clenched teeth in uncontrolled waves of agony.  
  
“Shit.” Sam got to him, but not before Dean slammed sideways into the car, seizing.  
  
“Shit, shit, shit,” Sam said, biting down on his lip to keep from screaming along with Dean. He’d seen it now. He knew it would last a few seconds at most, but his muscles still revolted at the act of pinning Dean’s flailing limbs to pavement, keeping him still against the vision in his head.  
  
Dean convulsed and then went limp, face ashen.  
  
“Hey.” Sam patted his cheek lightly, clamping down on the bile in his throat. Dean’s eyes opened, bright with pain and focused somewhere beyond Sam. “Come on. Hey. Look at me, man.”  
  
Dean didn’t. He blinked slowly, face a blank, head rolled to the side.  
  
“ _Dean_ ,” Sam said forcefully, and fuck, now was not the time to panic. He fumbled for his bottle of water and splashed some on Dean’s face, hoping the shock of cold would do something.  
  
It didn’t, and Sam forced back a panicked curse. Dean stared, alive but far away. Not present. Not right.  
  
“Come on, don’t do this to me now.” Sam said, trying to sound fierce and failing miserably. “It’s not time yet. It’s…come on.”  
  
He pressed his hand against Dean’s chest and felt the thump of his heart, too fast but strong enough that Sam relaxed infinitesimally. He hefted Dean up, and Dean’s head lolled unnaturally against his shoulder, still and quiet and  _wrong wrong wrong._  
  
The backseat of the Impala had served as a stretcher too many times. Sam knew how to tuck Dean’s head into the corner, the right way to bend his knees. Dad, Sam, and Dean – all three of them had bled there. He arranged Dean as well as he could and had to aim his shaking fingers at the ignition three times before he finally managed to get the key into its slot.  
  
He gunned it out of the parking lot, offering up a silent apology to Dean for the way the Impala bottomed out over the first hill. They’d taken Dean’s cell phone, but left Sam’s with Castiel, just in case.  
  
Sam dialed, heart hammering in his throat. “Cas,” he said. “It’s me. We’re on our way.”


	12. Chapter 12

  
**Chapter 12**

_Monday_   


  
Dean didn’t move for the entire trip back to the safe house. Sam tried to watch the road, but his eyes kept finding the rearview mirror and Dean’s limp body. He was pale and still, such a perfect imitation of death that Sam almost couldn’t bear to look at him.  
  
It was after two in the morning when they finally reached the cabin. Castiel met him at the door and took over Dean’s weight, bearing him to bedroom. They tied him with rope in case he started thrashing again, and in some useless attempt at caretaking, Sam put two pillows under his head.  
  
“Is this it?” Sam asked Castiel, half-gone with fear. “Is it happening?”  
  
Castiel stood like a statue in the middle of the room, face tight with sorrow. “It’s the beginning.”  
  
“How long?” Sam demanded. His heart was in his throat. He’d waited too long, he’d slept when he should have been out searching, he…  
  
“Until midnight,” Castiel said. “That’s it.”  
  
Sam sank to his haunches, fury and grief cutting his legs out from under him. He put his head in his hands. Think. Fucking _think_.  
  
“Sam,” Castiel said slowly, so careful. “You should do it now. We have everything we need to send him back. If we wait…”  
  
Sam speared him with a cold look, and Castiel stopped talking.  
  
“Blood from each soul, treasured possession, blood from the maker. What the fuck is the maker?” Sam muttered under his breath.  
  
He needed Bobby. Or Ash. Or a Castiel who wasn’t cut off from Heaven’s holy information network. He was supposed to be the smart one, but panic was making him stupid, wiping his mind blank. On the bed, Dean twitched once, mouth tightening in lines of pain.  
  
“We can summon Crowley back,” Sam said, half to himself. “He’ll trade something for the stone. He’ll always trade. Maybe…”  
  
“Sam!” Castiel gripped his shoulder. “If you had something to trade, Crowley would have made the deal already. You know that.”  
  
“Then tell me what to do!” Sam roared. “What the fuck am I supposed to do here?”  
  
Castiel just looked at him, the weight of centuries in his eyes. “You let him go. Dean’s ready for it. It’s what he expects of you.”  
  
Sam almost choked. He felt squeezed, pressed in. It was the worst thing Cas could have said. Dean wasn’t supposed to let go. Of anything. Grudges, family, memories. Life. Sam. What was he supposed to do with an older brother who didn’t keep fighting? He wanted to take the walls down with his bare hands.  
  
Screw it. Sam had been ignoring Dean’s expectations since the day he sent out his application to Stanford. He wasn’t about to go quietly now, when Dean’s life hung in the balance.  
  
“I’ve spent the last year and a half with him,” Castiel was saying. “Your brother is tired. He wants to rest. Even if he’s killed in Purgatory, his soul might still go to Heaven.”  
  
“Might,” Sam said. “But you don’t know.”  
  
Castiel’s jaw tightened.  
  
“He might be stuck there forever, while monsters rip him to shreds over and over again.”  
  
Castiel was looking at the ground now, and Sam wanted to scream at him.  
  
“I left him there already,” Sam said. “For  _eighteen months_. He’s not going back. Not by himself. You and I can’t get in there, so he’s staying here.”  
  
“How?” Castiel said. “You said it yourself – you don’t know what the last piece of the ritual means, and we don’t have any other options.”  
  
Maker.  _Maker_. Father, mother, God. Alpha. Eve. What the hell else could be a maker?  
  
“We have until midnight,” Sam said tightly. “I’ll figure it out.”

  
*****

  
_Dean walks. Purgatory is chill and silent, pitch dark and thick with danger. Red eyes blink at him and don’t attack.  
  
There’s a sense of waiting. The landscape shifts in Purgatory. Things that are miles apart one moment shrink to the span of a step the next. He should be twelve dying trees and a network of caverns away from the gate, but he can see it less than ten feet in front of him. The light through its jagged cracks is the only illumination in the whole world.  
  
Demons like to take hunters down a peg, and Dean’s lost count of the number of times he’s been insulted. How many creatures, both hellish and heavenly, have told him he’s nothing, that he has an inflated sense of his own importance?  
  
Still. He’s alone here. No angel juice, no weapons, no friends. He should be dead by now, or at least well on his way. But nothing approaches him. They’re watching the gate instead. Waiting. On the other side, light pulses. Even the Nephilim is momentarily still, head lifted like a dog with a scent.  
  
They don’t see him, Dean realizes. He’s not here yet. Some part of him is still in the real world, one foot in that sparse little bedroom, one in this wasteland.  
  
The gate is still holding, and Dean’s still split in half, which means Sam is out there somewhere, not giving up. It’s stupid and hopeless and if Dean were less fucked up he’d be furious. It warms him up a little instead, Sam’s mindless focus on saving him. He’ll take that with him when he’s ripped apart for real, and he thinks he won’t mind the shitty end to his life quite as much.  
  
A noise like a tree falling, and Dean looks. A new crack appears in the gate, zig-zagging crazily from the unseen crest all the way to the ground. The whole land takes in a breath of anticipation.  
  
Sam, Dean thinks. What are you waiting for?_

  
*****

  
Castiel paced, a nervous sentry by Dean’s bed. Sam couldn’t look at either of them – the disapproving blue of Castiel’s eyes or the deathly stillness of Dean’s limbs against the bedspread. Everything chafed at him, and he needed a clear head. He sat at the kitchen table and read.  
  
In the lore, the maker was always God. As far as Sam was concerned, God had screwed them in every way possible, so he wasn’t banking on his prayers being answered this time.  
  
“I don’t pretend to know the will of God,” Castiel said over his shoulder, making Sam jump. “But I can promise you He wouldn’t want Purgatory to fall.”  
  
Sam glanced up at him. There was some hint of the soldier in his face, calm and purposeful.  
  
“How the hell would you know?” Sam asked. “Maybe this is why he let you and Dean go to Purgatory in the first place. Maybe this is another prophecy that you don’t know about. You’re not exactly in the loop anymore, are you?”  
  
Castiel’s brows lowered. “The creatures in Purgatory could destroy the earth in a matter of days. Do you honestly believe that is how God intends for the world to end?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam said sharply. “I know Dean is dying, and you’re being a dick instead of helping.”  
  
Castiel shook his head. “I know you’re angry. I know you’re afraid of losing Dean again. But think of the price. Think of the dreams you’ve had in the last week. Is that what you want?”  
  
Sam narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, dreams?”  
  
Castiel’s eyes flicked to his. “The prophetic dream you and Dean shared.”  
  
“One dream,” Sam said, rising to his feet. Castiel could snap in half without lifting a finger, but Sam still liked his own height in that moment, the way Castiel had to tip his head up to follow him. “You said dreams, plural. How the hell did you know that?”  
  
Castiel licked his lips. “Dean told – ”  
  
“I never told anyone, including Dean.”  
  
Their shared dream had been the worst, the most vivid and painful, but Sam had been having dreams of Purgatory since Watson. Nightmares, he assumed. Products of his own anxiety. Castiel was looking away from him now, fingers tense at his sides.  
  
“It was you,” Sam said, anger building in a slow wave inside of him. “You’ve been sending us those dreams. The whole time.”  
  
“Sam – ”  
  
“What the  _hell_ , Cas,” Sam said. “I thought you were on our side!”  
  
“I  _am_ ,” Castiel said, voice measured. “I’ve only been trying to show you how dangerous – ”  
  
“Ever since Watson,” Sam said, shaking his head in disgust. “Ever since we found that spell. You’ve been trying to warn me away from it.”  
  
Castiel closed his eyes for a long moment, shoulders slumping down. “I was trying to help,” he said quietly.  
  
Sam was blind in his wrath, terrified that his only ally had turned on him again. He and Dean had been screwed over, one friend at a time, and now Sam was all that was left. Some fucking hand they’d been dealt.  
  
“Great,” Sam said. “You want to help? From here on out, stay out of my way.”  
  
Castiel took a physical step back, flinched. Sam watched him, stony and furious, heart pounding sickly.  
  
“Y-Yes,” Castiel said. “It’s…I understand.” And he disappeared.

  
*****

  
_Dean’s consciousness splits. In Purgatory the land is a living organism, attacking its inhabitants just as surely as its inhabitants attack each other. A cliff face crumbles with swift violence onto a shifter, and Dean feels the crack of a hundred bones. Breath stops in his body, then shudders to a start again. Tendons stretch, eyeballs pop, skin tears apart from sheer pressure.  
  
Dean wants to curl into himself, to find some way to take shelter, but the land pounds against him. He can’t take shelter from something he _is _. Every scream is one ripped from his own throat.  
  
The crumbling gate has intensified everything. More vicious. More bloody. They’re cattle before a thunderstorm, sensing the coming turbulence.  
  
The Nephilim brands holes into the shins of something that looks human except for its deep black eyes and bone-like claws. The thing twists, mouth gaping. It’s sorry that it tried to escape and wants to say so, but there are leaves stuffed down its throat to quiet its screams. Dean reaches for his own throat, but it doesn’t work that way. He’s the torturer and the tortured, taking joy in a pain that’s all his own.  
  
Outside the gate, the light grows brighter._

  
*****

  
Dean finally regained consciousness just after 6AM, eyes heavy and vivid green against his ashy skin. He didn’t give more than a half-hearted tug on each of his limbs. Sam was pretty sure that was a bad sign.  
  
“Hey,” he said, leaning over in his chair.  
  
“Hey.” Dean’s voice was hoarse and slow, quiet through cracked lips. “How long this time?”  
  
“Bout eight hours,” Sam admitted. Dean nodded, unconcerned.  
  
“Are you…does your head hurt?” he asked instead, searching Dean’s face.  
  
“I can still see it,” Dean said. “It’s like…part of my brain is there.”  
  
“Try to ignore it,” Sam said with a calm he didn’t feel. “You’re here, in Dad’s safe house, not there.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said, but he had shadows under his eyes. “Any luck?”  
  
Sinking failure, edge with sorrow. “No.”  
  
“Sammy, it’s time,” Dean said. He looked Sam right in the eyes, calm and resolved. “You know you have to do it. I’m counting on you.”  
  
“Not yet,” Sam said, and he couldn’t stop the tiny break in his voice. “Not yet.”  
  
The corners of Dean’s lips tugged up the tiniest bit, and Sam wished he’d taken more time to kiss Dean, instead of just grinding against him like some horny kid. Didn’t matter how many girls Sam kissed; Dean had the most addictive fucking mouth he’d ever seen.  
  
“Then talk to me,” Dean said.  
  
“About what?” Sam asked.  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Anything’s better than the peep show in my head right now.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam said helplessly. “You know everything. I don’t have any stories that you haven’t heard.” Shit, Dean was the star of half his stories, brash and brave and infuriating.  
  
“Stanford,” Dean said. “I wasn’t there for Stanford. So talk to me.”  
  
Sam swallowed. “I had a professor once who talked like the guy from  _Office Space_.”  
  
Dean actually looked interested in that. “Milton.”  
  
“Yeah, Milton. Jess used to do the best impression.”  
  
“Nice,” Dean said. “Knew I liked her.”  
  
He described the little bar where he and Jess used to spend Tuesday happy hours, slurping down margaritas. Jess had always held her liquor better than Sam, and the trips had usually ended with him trying to kiss her in public, and her shoving splayed fingers over his mouth.  
  
He told Dean about driving in San Francisco, rolling Jess’s ancient Honda halfway down a hill before he actually got it in gear. He’d always been a shitty driver. He didn’t have Dad’s or Dean’s confidence behind the wheel, their almost psychic connection with their cars.  
  
He explained how he got an F on a literature paper for refusing to write a defense of Lucifer’s character in Paradise Lost. He’d written a treatise on how to slay demons instead, and his professor had failed him for not addressing the question.  
  
He talked about getting wickedly drunk his freshman year, sick off of rum and coke and the three hits he’d taken from his friend’s joint. He didn’t talk about how he’d climbed up to the roof that night, teetering and heartsick, fingers poised over Dean’s number in his phone for two hours straight until someone realized he was missing.  
  
When he ran out of Stanford stories to tell, he switched to the last year. It was the only other time they’d lived apart. He did his best to explain why he liked Denver – the mountains, the quick pace of the city, the way there were wide open highways to escape to whenever he got claustrophobic. He dropped stupid details of his life – all the money he lost at fantasy football, the crowd that gathered to watch him shoot darts at the bar, the fact that Becca badgered him into going to see a dentist for the first time in five years.  
  
Dean fell asleep at some point, and Sam traded talking for looking. Dean’s stupid eyelashes touched his cheeks, so solemn and soft in sleep. John had been rugged and Mary had been beautiful and by some trick of nature Dean had ended up with both – strong jaw and pretty eyes and a smirk to disarm even the demons they hunted. Even if their lives weren’t so fucked up, Sam thought he still would have wanted Dean in the most visceral of ways.  
  
Maybe Dean had come back too many times already, he forced himself to think, and this was all that Sam had left. A few more hours to look at his brother, and then a lifetime of not knowing until he himself died. Even if Dean did end up in Heaven, there was no guarantee Sam himself would go there. There was no guarantee they’d find each other again. Maybe this was really it.  
  
He was fucking crying, he realized, and he’d never been so glad that Dean wasn’t awake to see it.  
  
 _How many people get more than one chance?_  he asked himself ruthlessly. Even hunters, who dealt with the afterlife on a daily basis, expected to die and stay dead. He’d seen Dean ripped to pieces once in front of him, and then he’d seen Dean walk back through the door months later, like he’d never died, never sent Sam into a tailspin that still haunted him to this day, never…  
  
And then it hit him.

  
*****

  
“Castiel!” he yelled, head tipped up to the creeping dark. “Where are you?”  
  
Cas was there instantly, wary and windblown, trench coat ruffling.  
  
“It’s you,” he said, breathing hard. “Cas, it’s you. You’re the maker.”  
  
“Are you implying that I’m God?” Castiel said, brows furrowed. “Because I’ve explained before that…”  
  
“You raised Dean from the dead. And me too, or at least my body. You re-made him, Cas. Literally. It’s your blood that we need.”  
  
Sam saw his realization, saw the way he started shaking his head before he even spoke. “Don’t ask this of me,” he pleaded. “I said I wouldn’t interfere, but you can’t ask me to contribute to this.”  
  
Once upon a time, Sam thought he might have had enough empathy to comply. Hours from Dean’s death, he found he didn’t have room for much of anything.  
  
“You owe him this much,” Sam bit out. “And me. You  _screwed_  us, man. We trusted you, and you turned on us. You almost killed me when you pulled that wall down in my head. You would have killed Dean. You want forgiveness? Do this now.”

  
*****

  
_Purgatory is in chaos, and Dean thinks he would have enjoyed it if it weren’t so painful. The gate is like a shattered windshield, new cracks radiating outward every moment. The monsters sense it, pushing in. The Nephilim is a river of blood, robe spattered with gore from protecting the gate. Dean has already felt two souls slip out unnoticed. The endless forest, so silent and foreboding when Dean lived there, is alive with screams.  
  
Dick Roman is somewhere close, his true form circling out of sight. When Dean lands back on two feet, that will be his first fight, he thinks. Hopefully not his last, because he’d like nothing more than to kill that asshole all over again.  
  
Sam is still waiting, and Dean thinks he knows why. Sam won’t give up until he has to, and he won’t let Dean go without saying goodbye and maybe weeping over him a little. Sam is like that, and every time Dean has mocked him for it has been a lie.  
  
Sam somehow escaped their childhood a little less scarred than Dean, and Dean wishes he knew who to thank for that. He thinks it’s probably just Sam himself, though, strong and whip-smart and way too good for the way fate fucked him over.  
  
The Nephilim spears a vampire to the splintered wood of the gate, and Dean feels the snap in his spine._

  
*****

  
Castiel melted Dean’s silver ring with a touch, turning it to a shimmering liquid in the bottom of Bobby’s engraved chalice. Sam opened a shallow cut on his own arm and pressed the split skin against the rim of the cup. Blood ran into the hot silver in a thin river. Castiel did the same, and then Sam did it for Dean, watching him wince in his sleep. Sam tipped the chalice back and forth until all the liquid swam together, streaks of red running through molten gray.  
  
“This is the worst plan I’ve ever seen you attempt,” Castiel said. “And I’ve seen you attempt several terrible ones.”  
  
“Yeah, well…I’m an overachiever,” Sam said.  
  
Sam painted the bloody sigil on the ceiling over the bed. He and Dean would need to be physically touching, and they’d need someone to say the rite. He shoved the photocopy into Castiel’s hands.  
  
“I doubt either of you will survive this,” Castiel said. “Or the planet. But I hope you do.”

  
*****

  
Dean didn’t so much wake up again, as fight his way out of the chaos of his own head. He had never felt quite so heavy in his life. The pull was painful and inexorable and it took everything he had left to keep his eyes open. He truly had one foot in each world now, and his grip on this one was fading quickly. Outside the window, it was dark.  
  
“Hey,” Sam was at his side, and Dean managed to turn his head.  
  
“I’m still…”  
  
“You in some sort of hurry?” Sam asked with a pathetic attempt at a smile.  
  
“Screw you,” Dean said hoarsely.  
  
“Big talk from the comatose kid,” Sam said, but he had that clogged-throat sound to his voice. The one that was tears and fear and the bravado that Dad had bred into them both.  
  
Everything felt really fucking morose. Dean had hoped that the last time Sam saw him he’d be going down fighting, doing something awesome and bloody, or at least taking a few sons of bitches with him. Like this, he could barely lift his own hand. At least Sam had untied him. The pull came from deep in the pit of his stomach, trying to wrench him away, but he wasn’t going a goddamn second before Sam was ready to send him.  
  
“Time?” he asked.  
  
“Ten ‘o clock,” Sam said. He was trying to hold it together, but his mouth was pulling miserably.  
  
“T minus two hours,” Dean said. “End of the line.” He followed the movement of Sam’s throat as Sam swallowed. Darkness pulled at his mind, and he focused on Sam’s face instead.  
  
They breathed for a while, Sam’s gaze intense and unwavering. The clock ticked, and Dean watched Sam’s curved knuckles, the stubbled skin of his jaw, the steady rise and fall of his shoulders.  
  
“Listen, Dean,” Sam said. Dean blinked, unsure how much time had passed. He was fading in and out, everything but Sam taking on a blurry edge. “I need to – ”  
  
“Don’t,” Dean said immediately. It was supposed to be an order, but it came out weak, like a plea.  
  
“No, just. Just let me get this out,” Sam said shakily. “I don’t want you to worry, because everything is going to be fine. I know you don’t believe me – ”  
  
“I believe you, Sammy,” Dean said, quiet and tired. “You’ve been doing good.”  
  
“Not just me,” Sam said. “I’m going to take care of everything.”  
  
Something was wrong about that assertion, but Dean didn’t have the energy to parse it out. Every bit of him was focused on keeping himself here and keeping Sam’s face in his vision.  
  
Sam was like a runaway train now, words tumbling out like they couldn’t stop. “You’re probably gonna kick my ass.” He laughed rawly. “Dad would fucking kill me. But I know what I’m doing. You have to trust me this time.”  
  
Dean opened his mouth to lie, to say that he’d always trusted Sam, but he didn’t have enough breath left.  
  
Sam was ghostly pale, mouth bitten red. “And I really love you,” he said, face twitching. “You’re my big brother, and I really love you, and you should know that.”  
  
Yeah, Dean knew that. Sam had said it enough to him, from the second he learned to speak. Dean had called him  _monster_ , and Sam still said it. Sam’s fingers touched the back of his hand, nervous and cold.  
  
“I’m going to be here,” Sam said, watery and resolved, “and I want you to keep hanging on to me, okay? Dean? Dean. This doesn’t work if you don’t put up a fight.”  
  
Dean had completely lost the thread of the conversation. His brain showed him blood and darkness, a thousand angry snarls, a thousand death rattles in his own throat. He was choking on it. He felt Sam’s weight on the bed, felt the way Sam curled toward him, forearm across his stomach.  
  
Sam held him like he was stuck to Dean, forever and always, and that was the last thought that followed Dean into the blackness.

  
*****

  
“Do it,” Sam said thickly. He scrubbed at his eyes. Dean was out again, heartbeat stuttering and faint. They had minutes, maybe.  
  
“He’s not going to like it. This isn’t what he’d want,” Castiel said, which was the understatement of the century.  
  
“If he’s alive to yell at me, that means it worked,” Sam said. “Do it.”


	13. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

  
Dean shoved his keys into his jacket pocket and draped the leather over the door hook. “Sam?” he called into the silence.  
  
“In here,” Sam’s voice drifted back to him from the general direction of the kitchen.  
  
Dean made his way through the narrow hallway, scratching at the new scar on his left forearm. A ghost had sent a set of steak knives at him, and if he’d moved any slower Sam would have been scraping little Dean bits off the silverware instead of just stitching him up.  
  
“Hey.” Sam was freshly showered, hair slicked back, t-shirt stretching tightly across his shoulders. He looked particularly hulking, stripped of bulky layers and weapons and his usual furrowed forehead. Dean saw three sandwiches on a paper plate.  
  
“At least two of those better be mine, bitch,” he said.  
  
Sam’s eyebrows lifted. “Depends what you brought home.”  
  
Dean dumped a wad of cash on the table, limp from being clutched in his sweaty hands for the last hour. “Easy pickings,” he said. “Couldn’t pull a pool cue out of their asses.”  
  
“Nice visual,” Sam said. “Thanks for that.”  
  
They ate at the cramped kitchen table in their temporary apartment. Sam let him have two of the three sandwiches, which was as much of a win in Dean’s book as anything else that had happened in the last year.  
  
Sometimes, when it was like this, Sam was almost himself, and Dean could forget.  
  
Dean flicked on the ridiculously small TV set in the kitchen, pushing through the channels until he landed on one of those narrated documentaries about the creation of the universe or something equally pointless. He lingered on the station, looking expectantly at Sam.  
  
“What?” Sam said. “You want to watch this?”  
  
“Dude, you used to love this shit.”  
  
Sam shrugged, pulled the remote out of Dean’s hand, and kept flipping. He landed on a late night soap opera and stopped, eyes perking with interest. Dean sighed.  
  
It was unsettling. Upsetting, even, and if Dean had known he’d ever care so much about his brother’s taste in television, he would have given himself a lobotomy years ago.  
  
But it wasn’t just the television. It was a million little things. Sam ate more fast food than Dean. Sam flirted with women, not all shy and self-effacing but with the swaggering confidence Dean recognized in himself. Dean had held out a photograph of their family once – John, Mary, and three-year-old Dean, the only one still in existence – and Sam had shaken his head in bewildered frustration.  
  
It was Sam, but sometimes it was like looking at a stranger. A stranger with Sam’s smile and voice and hands like dinner plates, but a stranger all the same.  
  
Despite all of that, it was still better than a year ago, when Sam had opened his eyes in the aftermath of the ritual and looked up at Dean, and there hadn’t even been a hint of recognition there. No joy, no affection, no memory. The world hadn’t ended. Dean hadn’t gone back to Purgatory. And Sam was not Sam.  
  
Dean remembered staring at his brother’s terrified face and feeling the world drop away from him like scissors snipping through thread.  
  
Dean had spent the first three days blind drunk, halfway between despair and fury, raging at Castiel with every breath in him.  
  
“How could you let him do it?” he’d snarled. Castiel had held him up when he started to sink and put him into unconsciousness when the grief threatened to bury him. He didn’t remember Sam in those first days, but he knew in the back of his mind that Cas had taken care of his brother, explained in small bits, convinced him that Dean was someone to trust, not someone to fear.  
  
When he’d finally been sober enough to stand upright, he’d seen Sam leaning against the doorway to the bedroom, hands shoved in his pockets.  
  
“I hear we’re brothers,” Sam said uncomfortably. Dean could remember Sam, lifetimes ago, looking at him in horrified disbelief when he’d done something particularly outrageous, and groaning  _how are we even related?_  Back then Dean had had the gall to laugh.  
  
“Something like that,” Dean had said, his brain screaming  _Sam Sam open your eyes how can you not why don’t you how could you do this to yourself?_  
  
“Okay,” Sam had said, sad and little lost. “I can’t remember, so I have to believe you.”  
  
And Dean had to live with that.  
  
“He’ll need you,” Castiel said. “Some things may come back to him but…his soul’s been blown apart and put back together. Pieces may be off. He’ll see things differently, maybe act differently. He’ll do best with familiar surroundings.”  
  
There had been nothing stable in their old life - just hunting and driving and Dean. It took six months for Sam to stop saying Dean like he was testing out the word in his mouth instead of like he’d been saying it since the moment he could speak. Sam didn’t remember morning coffee or packing rock salt side by side or the way it felt when the yellow-eyed demon finally lay at their feet. He didn’t remember Dean making him dinner or tying his shoes or teasing him out of his moodiness.  
  
He didn’t remember that Dean had gone to Hell for him once, and that later Sam had returned the favor.  
  
“You have what you’ve always wanted,” Castiel said, no judgment in his eyes. “Now Sam can’t ever leave you.”  
  
“You think I wanted this?” Dean asked bitterly. “You think it makes me feel good to see my kid brother like this?”  
  
But he’d watched Sam say goodbye to his life in Denver – end his lease, withdraw from classes, break up with his girlfriend with detached sympathy in his voice – and behind the dull ache in his heart there was a grim sliver of satisfaction that he couldn’t ignore.  
  
Sam had erased himself to keep them together, and Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever felt more alone.  
  
Sam’s body remembered hunting, even when his brain didn’t. Dean took him out to the mountains for target practice, and Sam looked down at his own gun in amazement when he shot six cans off the stone ledge at twenty paces. Sam held a knife like he always had, dropped into a crouch with the same clunky grace, checked his weapon before he holstered it. It was easy to convince Sam that the supernatural existed when Sam’s body remembered fighting it so intimately.  
  
Sam didn’t remember John, and Dean didn’t try too hard to remind him.  
  
Dean had hoped Sam’s nightmares of Hell would disappear along with his memories. Those, of course, clung to his newly-assembled soul like a succubus.  
  
“What the hell,” Sam gasped, curling over in bed. “What happened to me? What am I remembering?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean told him gruffly. “It’s done. You pulled through and you’re here now, not there.”  
  
Once, Sam’s whimpers woke him clear through the bedroom walls of the safe house they were staying in. Dean stumbled sleepily into his bedroom, leaned over and shook Sam awake.  
  
Sam stilled, eyes opening wide in the dark room.  
  
“Dude, you’re dreaming,” Dean said. “Just a dream.”  
  
Sam’s eyes fixed on him, and Dean thought he might be trying to sort out what was real and what was not. He reached up and curled a hand in the cotton of Dean’s t-shirt, just holding. Dean covered his hand with his own.  
  
“You’re fine,” he said, trying to sound soothing. He’d never been very good at soothing.  
  
Then Sam was pulling him forward, and in the darkness his eyes were on Dean’s mouth. Dean tried to jerk back.  
  
“What are you – ?” But he was off balance, and Sam pulled him down, lips ghosting against Dean’s temple. Dean held himself there, barely breathing.  
  
“We do this, right?” Sam asked shakily. “Tell me we do this.”  
  
Dean swallowed. “We shouldn’t.”  
  
“That’s not what I asked.”  
  
Dean felt his head turning, and then Sam’s mouth was on his, licking lightly, thumbs on his jaw, knee shifting up against Dean’s hip. Dean’s shoulders sagged toward him, suddenly helpless with a year of wanting. Sam kissed him until his lips went numb, all the while working his shirt up toward his shoulders.  
  
“You should have told me,” Sam was saying. “You let me think I was fucked up all by myself.”  
  
“Trying not to fuck you up,” Dean mumbled, but it probably got lost in his groan when Sam pressed a palm against his crotch.  
  
Later, Dean would tell himself that he let Sam fuck him, but there was no letting about it. New Sam was better than no Sam, and Dean would have turned over as many times as Sam wanted for that needy look in his eyes.  
  
“I can’t remember,” Sam said, after. “I get flashes, but I can’t hold on to them.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean told him quietly. “We look out for each other. You remember that, and we’re both good.”  
  
“I hate not knowing anything about myself,” Sam said, and Dean had just enough time for the guilt to crash over him before Sam added, “but I can’t shake this feeling. Like maybe I don’t regret it.”  
  
“You just said you don’t remember.”  
  
“I don’t, but…” Sam’s eyes found his. “Castiel said you would have died, if I didn’t do it. I guess you were the deal breaker. For me.”  
  
“You were always a weepy little bitch,” Dean said, and closed his eyes.  
  
As he drifted off, he felt Sam’s fingers on his bare back, tracing lines of memory into his skin.

  
**The End**   



End file.
